Caught in a Rip Tide
by filigree
Summary: Something had to be done after the way it all ended - and when Desmond activated the failsafe, well, things took a turn. AU. Picks up end of season 2 for Lost and end of season 1 for Battlestar Galactica 2003. Spoilers for both.
1. Failsafe

Thanks to ImLostForever for being a fab Beta Reader. All mistakes are mine.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Lost or BSG 2003 or any of the characters.

**Caught in a Rip Tide **

**Chapter 1 **

**Failsafe**

'SYSTEM FAILURE. SYSTEM FAILURE. SYSTEM FAILURE. SYSTEM FAILURE.'The mechanical voice gave way to a low drone, a deep vibration that sent shudders through the whole building. Desmond knew what was happening. On the day that plane had crashed it had been the same; the hieroglyphs had gone red on the digital clock, the room had started to shake and over and over the female computer voice had repeated the same mantra, _System Failure. System Failure. _Only that time he hadn't waited long enough for the voice to give up.

He could see the small hexagonal cover now, it's yellow edges winking in the emergency lights. He crawled the last few yards, gritting his teeth as the humming vibration intensified. It made his fillings hurt. Soon everything was rattling, shaking down so hard the whole building felt like it was about to collapse on top of him. He clutched the key tighter, fighting against the unseen forces that were tugging at it, trying to pull it out of his grasp.

When he finally reached the cover and flipped up the lid, he watched with horror as it was immediately ripped out of his hands and flung against a far wall. He took a deep breath, holding the precious key as firmly as he could. With an effort he forced it into the lock, twisted hard, shut his eyes and waited.

At first nothing happened. For one tiny moment he wondered whether Kelvin had been wrong. Perhaps all this wasn't real after all – the hatch, the button - maybe John Locke had been right and the whole thing had been a scam. But just as that thought hit home and he almost began to hope again, there was a flash, a brighter light than anything he'd ever seen before, and he knew it was Kelvin who'd made the best guess, and now Desmond had burst the dam and he was going to die.

He braced himself for whatever it was that was about to overwhelm and destroy him, holding fast to every speck of courage he possessed. He was ready. He had accepted his fate. He would take the pain. But there wasn't any pain, just an intense bright, white light. Time seemed to stop. It was like he was standing in the middle of a space where nothing moved, and everything was just suspended in brightness. There was bright everywhere, it was like he was seeing white from inside himself, as if the light came from within him and was exploding all his molecules from the inside out. Was this what death felt like? Was _this_ dying? He was going into the light, becoming light. It didn't hurt; it just felt like he was being turned inside out, it felt like the light inside him was enveloping every cell, inverting his whole body. He was being renewed. No one told him it would be like this. He looked at it in wonder, consciously surrendering himself to it, allowing his whole self to be moved and transformed. It was as if the light was raising him up, transporting him, he could almost feel the spaces between each cell. He was light. He was air. He was free.

**00000**

Boomer threw herself into the pilot's seat. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Racetrack glancing back through the door.

'Don't turn around!' she yelled, flipping up the control panel, 'Close the hatch!' She fired the engines hot and slammed the controls so hard that the Raptor lurched as it took off, swaying drunkenly in a crooked line. She corrected the angle, swearing softly under her breath as she pushed the Raptor to its limit, forcing it to accelerate towards the glimmer of the opening fifty yards above them. She just hoped the Cylons didn't close it and trap them inside. They must have found the nuke by now.

'Start the clock.' She shouted back to Racetrack, willing the Raptor to climb faster. She could hear Racetrack punching in the numbers,

'Spooling up the FTL…' Racetrack's voice was shaking but it sounded like she was still holding it together. Just.

Through the cockpit she could still see the membranous sides of the Base Star. It was taking too long. If they had any chance at all they had to get enough distance between themselves and that live nuke. How long had she set the detonator for? Three minutes? She hadn't counted on standing around being examined by dozens of copies of herself… she'd stood there for what? A minute? Two minutes? She'd been frozen in time, just staring at them in horror. She shook the picture from her mind, seeing instead the red walls of the Base Star give way to the black of empty space.

There was a jolt from the first shockwave as the nuke went off, then a shudder as the FTL drive kicked in.

A flash.

'What the frak?'

The Raptor was hurtling down towards the planet.

'Jump us out of here!' Boomer screamed as she fought the controls.

'I can't! The FTL's not working!'

'Godsdamn!' The Raptor tore through the upper atmosphere, jolting and shuddering like it was about to rip itself apart.

'Pull up! Pull up!' cried Racetrack.

Boomer held on grimly. None of the controls were working. The Raptor was being sucked down too fast. _I'm going to die. I'm finally going to die_. She watched as the world flung itself past her cockpit. Nothing mattered now. This was it, it was over.

Suddenly the controls came back. Whatever it was that had been pulling them in let go, and the Raptor bucked, almost flipping them sideways.

'What the…?'

'It's OK, I'm on it!' Carefully, Boomer eased on the back thruster, and got the nose straight again. _'Easy now.' _That's what he would say_. 'Just take it easy, Sharon. Loosen up.' _The clouds were thick here, getting darker, faint marks of rain tracing their way across her windshield. She was mesmerized by their little rivulets, the patterns they were making, their tiny formed shapes. They seemed so innocent, so smooth. She watched the way the light filtered through them, catching the edges and making them sparkle. Until there wasn't any light anymore. In an instant the air turned from gray to black and suddenly huge blobs of rain were hammering down hard, completely obscuring her vision. She felt a thump as the wind thudded against the side of the plane, scooping it to the side.

'Frak, where did that weather system come from?' She bit down the panic and focused on keeping the Raptor steady, trying to get a fix on something through the murk._ That's it, just edge the nose back up again nice and slow. Nice and slow._ She wondered if he was still alive. Maybe he was dead. Maybe she'd blown up that base star for nothing.

'Boomer!'

She looked up, startled.

'Pull up!'

The Raptor tore through the last of the clouds, and suddenly the ground was all around them. There was no time, she jerked the nose up higher, making the Raptor sit up and beg. It bumped along the tops of the trees, skidding down through the canopy as it smashed its way to the ground. There was no way they were going to survive this. What kind of a pilot was she anyway? She'd messed up another godsdamn landing.

_Sorry Chief. I broke your plane_.


	2. Lost

**Chapter 2**

**Lost**

**Day 1  
**

'Close the cell door,' Adama gave the order in a tight, controlled rage. Laura Roslin stood behind the bars looking at him with a mixture of compassion and defiance. She clearly thought he had brought all this on himself. Perhaps he had, but the woman was dangerous. He had no regrets.

Outside the Brig he set the pace slow, walking the distance to the CIC with measured strides, letting the familiar walls ground him and give him time to think. Laura Roslin had certainly screwed with their chances of destroying that Base Star. Without Starbuck and the captured Raider it was hard to see how they could get anywhere near Kobol without jumping Galactica into the path of the Base Star and risking the safety of the whole fleet. He knew that sending Boomer and Racetrack had been a long shot – and if they failed then Roslin would have even more to answer for. To hell with her, she had made it quite clear that the lives of his crew didn't matter. She had demonstrated _that_ when she sent Starbuck on her crazy religious quest. And now his crew were having to pay. They hadn't a hope in hell of getting the survey team off of Kobol with that base star in the way, and the two pilots he'd just sent out in that Raptor were almost certainly on a one-way mission. Why the frak couldn't she stay out of his military decisions? She had turned into a loose canon. A very dangerous and determined loose canon. And as for Lee… godsdamn, how did she get to him to the point where he would put a gun to the XO's head? That was mutiny. Mutiny in a time of war. _What_ was he playing at? Did he think that he was immune to the law just because he was the commander's son? Adama felt a chill shudder him to the bone. How could he protect him from this? He'd lost Starbuck, and now Lee…

Adama entered the CIC, carefully composing himself, straightening out his expression and his emotions, but seeing Lee standing there in handcuffs brought the seething rage and fear right back to the surface. Lee met his gaze with - what? Did he really expect his father's approval? Was he actually proud of what he'd done? Or was this just some ridiculous show of bravado? Didn't he realize this wasn't a game? _Godsdammit_! Adama shook his head and took a deep breath. All eyes were on him, and for once the friendly chatter of the CIC had given way to an almost reverential hush. He made his way to the center of the room, looking straight ahead. He took up his position, standing where he always stood, in command of himself and of his ship. Only now he had the President in the Brig and his one surviving son in handcuffs in front of him. He let his breath out slowly. It was all falling apart.

'Dee, any sign of Boomer and Racetrack?' he forced his voice to carry across the room.

'No Sir.' There was silence. No one moved.

He filled the quiet by staring pointedly up at the dradis monitor above him, ignoring the tremendous pull to look over at Lee, to see him, go to him, protect him, yell at him. Anything but this. _His_ hands were tied too. He was the Commander of this ship and his son had just threatened to kill his Executive Officer. He fixed his eyes on the monitor, willing the thing to give him some sort of a solid bearing. What threw him was the niggling doubt that perhaps Lee was right. Maybe one bad decision wasn't enough to terminate Roslin's presidency. He squinted slightly, peering at that screen as if it would give him some insight into what to do next. He tried to slow down, to focus on the blinking curser and measure his thoughts to match its winking rhythm. So. Starbuck had gone, taking the Cylon Raider back to Caprica on some foolish mission that Roslin had put her up to. He felt the rage flaming up again. _Damn_ that Roslin woman's crazy religious claptrap. And damn himself for lying about earth and losing Starbuck's trust. Knowing Starbuck, why was he surprised when she spat out the lie and chose to follow a live dream instead? Laura Roslin had very adroitly played them both. But what a time to do it. Godsdamn but they needed that Raider. Where were Boomer and Racetrack?

'Dradus contact! A single Base Star bearing four eight seven carom zero one five.'

'How'd they find us?' It was Tigh who voiced the question, coming up beside him to follow his gaze, looking up at the monitor flashing red now with the presence of the Base Star. With a certain sense of relief, Adama felt the familiar clarity and calm envelop him. Crisis and danger had never confused or panicked him, but instead sharpened his senses to a needle point and given him an eerie sense of calm, a still-point where everything came sharply into focus. It had made him a good viperViper pilot in his younger days, and it probably went a long way to making him a good Commander now. He oozed a steadiness and solidity that his crew relied upon.

Adama stared at the monitor, all his senses razor sharp. At least now he didn't have to second guess himself. The presence of the Base Star had made the next step obvious. 'Dee, alert the fleet. Confirm escape coordinates Alpha.'

'Yes sir, confirming.' There was a pause, as Dee tapped the coordinates through the scrambled channel. A few seconds later she looked up, 'Escape coordinates Alpha confirmed, sir.'

'Jump the fleet, Dee.'

She started the familiar drill, 'Galactica to all vessels, prepare to make immediate FTL jump to escape coordinates Alpha. I say again, escape coordinates Alpha. Clock will start on my mark. MARK.'

Adama turned to his son, still standing quietly in the corner. He nodded at the armed guard next to him, 'Undo the cuffs,' he said gruffly, then to Apollo, 'I don't condone what you did, but right now I need every pilot I can get. And I need my CAG. Now launch the alert fighters and get yourself down to the flight deck.'

He watched as Apollo snapped into action, moving quickly to the mike. 'This is the CAG, launch alert fighters, I repeat launch alert fighters.' Their eyes met for one brief second as Lee glanced over before walking quickly out of the room, leaving his father with that familiar tug of regret. If anything happened to him out there it wasn't much of a goodbye.

'They're launching Raiders, sir.' Dee swallowed nervously. No one spoke as they all waited for Galactica's own fighters to clear the launch tubes.

'Put the com chat on speaker,' it was Tigh, his voice rough. The CIC was blind and deaf apart from the blurred images from the Dradus monitor. The pilots were their eyes and ears out there.

After a few seconds the hiss and crackle of the speakers gave way to the ViperViper pilots calling out to each other. The whole CIC held its breath to listen, none of them daring to move lest it upset the delicate equilibrium of the battle now raging outside.

'Hotdog, on your tail, swing left, swing left!' It was Kat's voice, sounding distorted as she yelled into her micmike.

'I got it Kat, I owe you.'

'Save that for the mess hall,' Lee's voice now, calm and in control, 'C'mon people keep it together. Break right, break right! Godsdamn that was close. Hotdog I just saved your ass!' Lee's voice rose in pitch and Adama unconsciously gripped the edge of the table in front of him. He'd been a ViperViper pilot. He knew the risks. He knew exactly what his son was flying into. And that was the problem. He felt a small rivulet of sweat snake down the inside of his uniform.

Dee looked up, her hand touching the side of her headset, 'That's the last of the fleet away, sir.'

'Recover fighters. Standby to jump,' Tigh sniffed as he gave the order, jutting out his lip like he did when he was nervous. Adama knew exactly what he was thinking - that maybe this was the time their crazy luck ran out, the time they didn't pull it off.

'All birds come on home,' Dee's voice was clear and melodious, 'I repeat, all birds come on home.'

'OK people, combat landings!' Apollo's voice sounded scratchy through the speakers. 'Go! Go! I got it, Kat, get your ass back to Galactica NOW!'

Dee licked her lips nervously. Adama glanced up at her, waiting. He never got used to this. It was too intimate, too real, the sounds of the pilots fighting and dying while he stood waiting, hoping, powerless to do anything else. Adama braced himself, as he always braced himself, hearing his son out there over and over, never knowing if this was the time he'd have to hear him die while he just stood there, impotent and alone, masking his grief while his crew watched and waited for his orders.

He knew Lee would be the last to land his plane. He knew he'd be hanging back counting his pilots in, watching _them_ not the Cylon raiders. The race back to Galactica's landing bays was the most dangerous part of their launch and recover. It left their backs totally exposed and the Cylons knew it. _Come on Lee. Come on._

'All fighters aboard, Sir.'

He felt his heart flutter with relief as the whole CIC let out its breath in a collective sigh. 'Execute jump.'

'Attention Galactica, stand by to jump in five, four, three, two, one. JUMP.'

**00000**

Desmond hit the ground with a thud. The shock of it jarred every sense he had, slamming into the length of his body and knocking the breath out of him. He lay for a second, bruised and winded, a wave of despair rolling over him as he realised that he was still very much alive and the light had gone. Heaven had gone. Death had gone. That amazing feeling of light and flying had given way to a crushingly solid impact. And now here he was, back in his body in the real world; cold, hard and totally unyielding.

'Jump complete.' It was a man's voice, coming from somewhere below him. He opened his eyes slowly. He was lying face down. It was hard and cold. He realised with a shock that he was naked. Someone must have removed all his clothes. He squinted to try and see where he was. Across a small aisle about five feet away he could see legs and feet. He looked at the legs quizzically and then turned his head to the side. It looked like he was lying down under some sort of desk.

'Report.' Another voice. Not someone he recognized. These voices were clipped, efficient. Certainly not John Locke, or Charlie, or the priest, Eko. He wondered what had happened to them, whether the failsafe had saved them too. He tried to lift his head higher, but a wave of nausea forced him to stop and he had to rest his forehead on the floor, taking deep breaths to prevent himself from vomiting.

'Dradus is empty, no contacts.' The first voice again. It was a man's voice, with the rough edge of a teenager about it.

'Dee, where's the fleet?' The second voice again, older, more gravelly. _Fleet?_ That meant ships. A sudden rush of hope filled him. Perhaps he had been rescued.

'Checking all channels. No Colonial signals. They're gone, sir.' A woman's voice this time. Desmond held his breath and tried to listen to what they were saying.

'Lieutenant Gaeta, what happened?'

'I don't understand it, sir, those coordinates were confirmed. The fleet should be here.' With an effort, Desmond finally pushed himself up onto his knees. He had to talk to them, get their attention. The thought crossed his mind that it was strange that no one seemed to be paying _him_ any attention – after all, they must have brought him here, undressed him and then just laid him down behind a desk. He paused, trying to figure out what that meant.

'Dee, are you sure you confirmed the escape coordinates?'

'Yes sir, I sent them out just before we jumped.'

'Well then, where's the frakking fleet?' This last voice had an impatient, angry edge. Something wasn't right. This wasn't right. If they were here to rescue him he wouldn't be lying bollock naked behind a desk. Maybe they were Hostiles and they'd captured him and brought him here. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind so that he could at least think straight.

'Lieutenant Gaeter, look into it, see if you can find out what happened to the fleet.'

Desmond could feel the panic rising in him. Where was he? His head was still spinning and he was having trouble seeing straight. He took a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet, holding onto the desk in front of him as the room began to spin. He swallowed hard and spoke out as loudly as he could, 'Excuse me, brother? Where are my clothes?'

The whole room turned in surprise. For one brief moment he was staring into a myriad of shocked faces. He could feel his own eyes widen in surprise as he found himself the object of their intense scrutiny. He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to hold himself upright as another wave of nausea rolled over him. When he opened them again he saw that the sea of faces had moved away. The surprised stares had turned instead to an older man in the center of the room. He recognized that look, the uniforms. _This was a military base,_ Desmond realised with a jolt of recognition, _and_ _they were waiting for orders_. So he too turned his attention to the man in the blue uniform, standing solid and strong in the center of the room. Desmond just caught his gaze before his legs gave way under him. What looked back at him was curious and steady, the other man's look of surprise hardening as their eyes met and locked. But in that moment blackness engulfed him and he slipped to the ground. At least this time he wouldn't be conscious when he hit the floor.


	3. Wrecked

Chapter 3

Wrecked

It was Racetrack who pulled her out of the wreckage. The wound on her face had opened up again and it hurt like hell.

'Here, drink something,' Racetrack handed her a small canister of water, watching carefully as she took an experimental sip. It tasted foul - warm and stale - but she was thirsty enough to drink it. She pushed herself up on her elbow to take another swig, gulping back two more mouthfuls before wiping her hand across her mouth, careful not to touch the bandage or go near the swelling underneath. It really hurt. She squinted in the sunlight, wincing at the way her muscles pulled at the wound. Where the hell where they? For a moment the scene around her didn't make any sense - the woodland, the wreckage, the branches and bits of twisted metal. Then she remembered. They'd crashed. She must have blacked out.

'How long was I out for?'

'I don't know,' Racetrack sat down beside her, taking the canister from her and grimacing at the taste, 'I woke up just before you did. You were lucky. That tree saved your life.' She nodded over at the Raptor. Boomer followed Racetrack's gaze, her eyes opening wide in surprise. The Raptor was a mess. A huge tree had come down right on top of it, crumpling it from nose to tail. She could just see a small gap over the pilot's seat, a little arc of shelter where a smaller tree had fallen first, protecting her from it's larger neighbor. Without it she would almost certainly have been crushed to death.

Racetrack put the cap back on the water bottle, 'What do you think happened?'

Boomer shrugged, 'My guess is the FTL got bumped in the blast and we wound up here on Kobol.'

'The nuke went off, didn't it? We got the Base Star?'

'Yeah. I think so.'

'Then they'll be able to send a rescue party.' Racetrack settled back against a tree and closed her eyes, 'Tell me that Raptor isn't going to blow, because I don't want to frakking move.'

Boomer half-smiled, 'It looks pretty dead to me.' With an effort she pushed herself upright and began to circle the damaged plane. There was no fire, no smoke, just some scorch marks where the engines had burned the ground on their way in. Above them the trees gave way to a steep slope that ended in a rocky outcrop. Below was thick jungle. She couldn't get near the plane. It was covered with a mass of branches fanning out from the tail of the Raptor. She scouted round them, working her way to the far side of the plane. She felt the difference in temperature immediately. Here the jungle felt cooler, the sunlight shimmering through the tops of the trees, making little moving dots that played on the greens and browns of the jungle floor. It looked like a dancing carpet of light. Nice. She hadn't realised how much she'd missed seeing the sun and colors that were bright and cheerful – a change from the endless gray of Galactica. She filled her lungs, reveling in the scent of earth and trees and greenery. _Gods_ it was good to be breathing air that hadn't been cleaned up a million times. She gently touched the bark of one of the trees, it's trunk reached up, up towards the sky. It all felt so _alive_. She continued moving slowly around the side of the plane, touching trees and leaves, enjoying the hum of life surrounding her. Towards the end of her circuit she had to clamber over a wall of roots. She could see how the tree had landed on top of the Raptor now. It looked like one of the side pods had got caught under a branch or something. The Raptor must have bounced as it hit the ground and ripped the tree out of the ground before flipping it over onto itself. Neat move. It just meant there was no way the Raptor was ever going to fly again. She shook her head sadly. Maybe a better pilot would have landed it without the bounce…

She completed her circuit and emerged from the undergrowth. Racetrack was still where she'd left her, propped up against a tree.

'I think it's OK,' she told her 'It's not going to fly again, but at least it won't explode first.'

Racetrack's eyes were closed but she shook her head. 'My head hurts,' was all she said.

Boomer took a deep breath, ignoring the insistent throbbing from the wound on her own face, 'There's some high ground to the South,' she said, 'Maybe we should take a look, try to figure out where we are.'

Racetrack sighed, 'You're the boss,' with an effort she pushed herself up and stood, hands folded, solemnly surveying the wreckage, 'You think any of the survey team made it?'

Boomer immediately felt the jolt in her belly. It told her, what? That he really _was_ dead? That he wouldn't care about her anymore anyway because- she'd almost forgotten. Her stomach lurched again. It didn't seem real now. It was like a blurry, weird nightmare that she'd dreamt as part of the crash. Had she been dreaming? She was concussed, she'd blacked out. No, she'd seen them on the Base Star _before_ the crash. Those other Sharons, identical to her, all lined up and smiling at her like some sort of twisted horror movie. It hadn't been a dream. She felt the panic rising inside her. It had to be some sort of Cylon trick. It couldn't be real, she was from Picon, for fraks sake. She remembered her childhood. But the memory of them was so real. As real as her childhood on Picon. They had touched her face, stroked the bandage so softly, so gently, told her they loved her. And in some weird way those other Sharons had felt like home – they had seemed so achingly familiar. And they'd seemed to care. She sighed. It had all gone to shit with the Chief anyway. When she'd lain in sickbay with half her face blown off, he'd guessed she hadn't forgotten to check the chamber. He'd thought she was crazy, that she needed help. Maybe he was right.

'Boomer?' Racetrack's voice broke into her thoughts. She looked up guiltily. Had Racetrack seen them when she took off from the Base Star? Had she seen the Sharon clones too?

'Do you think there are any Toasters nearby?' Racetrack was eyeing the relative darkness of the jungle with a mixture of suspicion and fear.

Boomer hadn't thought of that. They'd taken out the Base Star, but it hadn't occurred to her that the Cylons might have landed on the planet first. Of course they had, they weren't going to just sit there in orbit without sending a whole bunch of them down here. A shiver ran through her. She didn't want to meet any more Sharons wandering through the jungle.

'We need to stay near the Raptor,' was all she could manage.

Racetrack nodded. They were the same rank, she and Racetrack, but the Old Man had made Boomer the Skipper of this mission and that put her in charge. She tried to remember her training, bringing up the page in the little manual she'd spent weeks trying to memorize. She'd always remembered this bit because the wording was weird '_After securing the site, enable the beacon and set up a defensive position nearby_.' She'd always wondered about that; '_enable the beacon_' - why couldn't they just say 'turn it on'?

'We should get the Beacon working,' she said with as much conviction as she could, 'I'll go check out that high ground, see what's up there. You get the Beacon out of the Raptor.'

'Be careful,' Racetrack warned, 'stay low.'

Boomer scrambled up the bank, flattening herself as she reached the top. She knew that her silhouette could be seen for miles, so she crawled the last few yards. The slope rose steeply to an escarpment and then a sheer drop down. She peered over the edge. Below her was a hundred feet of empty space and then the hill melting into more jungle before it reached the sea. This was the highest point for miles. In front of her was a huge panorama of sea and sky, the blue of the sea meeting the horizon in a gorgeous mingling of colors. It was breathtakingly beautiful. This was the sort of place she and the Chief always said they'd go on shore leave – if they had the money. They could never afford to go somewhere like this, but that hadn't stopped them from dreaming. The last time they'd had leave they'd made all sorts of plans; to leave the military, set up house, start a family. It could never happen now, she thought sadly. Even if the war ended tomorrow. She wondered if he was nearby. What if he was looking up at the same patch of sky that she was? She shook herself. Stupid. He was probably dead – and even if he was still alive, the chance of his Raptor crashing anywhere near them was zero. And if, by some strange fluke, he _was_ nearby, well, _now_ she was a frakking Cylon. She crawled backwards off the crest and plodded wearily back to the broken plane. In the back of her head a little voice kept repeating over and over, _I'm a Cylon. I'm a frakking Cylon._

'What's up there?' Racetrack was busy tugging a branch off the side of the plane.

Boomer took a deep breath, _Remember your training. You're an officer. _'We're on the edge of a land mass, there's sea right the way to the South - but that's good as there'll be nothing to obstruct the signal,' she paused, hoping Racetrack wouldn't see through her, or that _she_ wouldn't blurt out the truth, _Hey Racetrack, know what? I'm a frakking Cylon._ She'd never been any good at lying. Or maybe she had. Either way, all she heard herself say was, 'Did you get the Beacon out?'

'I found it in there,' If Racetrack noticed anything different about her she didn't let on, she simply pointed to a heap of twisted metal at the tail of the plane. 'That's what's left of the rear locker. The Beacon looks OK, though,' she knelt down to examine it. 'The tripod's smashed so we'll need to weigh it down with rocks or something-' she stopped mid sentence 'Hey, you think that Cylon transponder's still working?'

'What?' Boomer's breath caught as she realised the significance of what Racetrack was saying. She fought down a wave of panic, 'Frak, I hope not or they'll be crawling all over us.'

'Transponders only work when there's power, right? I mean, that's why we've got the Emergency Beacon.' Racetrack was already getting up and squeezing through the branches into the back of the Raptor. 'OK, so… powering up – nope, nothing from the ECO station,' Boomer waited uncomfortably. After a few seconds Racetrack's head reappeared, 'All the systems are fried. I can't get to the control panel up front, but from what I can see the Raptor's totally dead. There's no power.'

'Didn't it have its own power source?'

'Frak knows, I didn't install the thing.'

Boomer took a deep breath. She could feel herself unraveling. Every time she tried to focus on something concrete, all that sprung to mind was the image of those other Sharons on the Base Star. Was she really a Cylon? _Frak_, she was supposed to be in charge here. She was supposed to be in control. _Keep it together, Sharon._ She took another deep, ragged breath, trying to stop the trembling in her voice,'We need to find that transponder, check if it's hard wired into the Raptor. If it isn't, then I guess we know it powers itself.'

Racetrack nodded, squinting into the mass of branches. 'Where'd they put it? You know what it looks like?'

'It's white, round, small. They put it up in the canopy someplace.' The Chief's replacement had pointed it out to her before they took off. He'd said it was supposed to transmit a Cylon signal so the Raptor would be confused for Cylon. Well, it had got them onto that Base Star so it must have been working _then_. Unless of course there was a chip in _her_. Oh gods. _She_ was the transponder. How else would the other Sharons have even known she was there?

'Hey, I'll see if I can get onto the roof from here,' She watched helplessly as Racetrack shimmied up the side of the fallen trunk. 'You see if you can see it from inside.'

Boomer nodded meekly and started pulling off the branches and broken twigs that were obscuring the hatch. Racetrack must have pulled the alarm after the crash and gotten the hatch to blow out because the door itself was lying in a burned and twisted heap several yards away. She fought her way in to the back of the Raptor, squeezing past the ECO controls to try and get a look up at the ceiling near the cockpit. The Raptor's insides were unrecognizable. The tree had crushed the outer hull, it's branches twisted and wrenched the skin, leaving sharp, exposed edges. She spent a fruitless half hour trying to find a way through.

Eventually she heard Racetrack's voice from above her, 'Hey, I think I got it!'

Boomer disentangled herself from the jumble of tree branch and metal, and clambered up onto the roof. She saw what Racetrack was pointing at - tucked in behind a flap of metal was the unmistakable shape of the Cylon transponder, 'Yeah, that's it,' she said quietly.

'Doesn't look like it's hardwired in or anything.' Racetrack was already poking away at it, twisting it round to reveal the frame it was attached to.

'So it must have its own power source.'

'Which means it might be _on_. Let's bust some rocks on it.' Racetrack ripped it off the mounting and threw it to the ground, jumping down quickly after it. By the time Boomer had climbed down, Racetrack was hitting it hard with a rock.

'Cut it out, Racetrack, you're making enough frakking noise to alert every Cylon for miles.'

Racetrack put the rock down, 'This damn thing's indestructible.'

'Yeah, well, it's designed to survive a crash. OK, so we take it up to the high ground and throw it over the other side. That way if it _is_ switched on at least we'll have some warning before the Cylons get here.'

'I don't think it's working anyway.' Racetrack picked it up and shook it.

'Well, just to be sure,' Boomer took it off her and examined it closely. There was no light on it, nothing to suggest that it was still active. How the hell did any of the Tech crew on Galactica switch the thing on? They must have opened it up, but the casement was sealed tight. She held it up to her ear. _Frak_, you'd think if she was a Cylon it would be talking to her or something. She shook her head. Nothing.

'There's a steep drop the other side,' she pointed up the slope, 'we'll lose it over the edge.'

They packed up the Beacon and dragged it to the higher ground, crawling on their bellies for the last fifteen yards and flattening themselves against the skyline. Racetrack started scraping away a flat space for the Beacon while Boomer eased herself up to the lip of the escarpment with the Cylon transponder. She had no idea whether the damn thing was on or off, she just knew she couldn't have it near her. Once she was right at the edge she pulled back her arm and flung the Cylon Transponder as hard and as far as she could. She heard it bounce once, twice, the noise echoing loudly off the rocks below. She held her breath, waiting for the sound to die before she crawled gingerly back to Racetrack's position. They finished fixing up the Beacon in grim silence, all senses on high alert. They were too exposed up here, there was no cover. If a Cylon Raider happened to come by there was nowhere to hide. They quickly built a small pile of rocks, embedding the Beacon so that it would be less visible from the air. Then they turned it on, watching it's red light winking slowly to show it was sending out a signal. They covered the light with a flat stone and edged carefully backwards, relief flooding them as they finally made it to the relative safety of the Raptor. The sky was beginning to darken as they both flopped down, reaching for the last of the water. Now that they'd fixed the Beacon, all they had to do was wait for someone from Galactica to come and get them.

'It was dark when we crashed,' observed Racetrack, frowning up at the sky, 'So either we were out for hours or this planet has short days - the Chief must've had the specs for Kobol. Did he tell you anything about it?'

Boomer winced. Of course everyone knew about her and the Chief. But it was over. They should know _that_ too. 'No.' she said stiffly, 'He didn't say anything.'

Racetrack yawned 'Well, however long that day was, I'm bushed.'

'Look, why don't you go get some sleep?' asked Boomer, 'I'll take the first watch.'

She was relieved when Racetrack stopped talking and spread herself out on the ground, curling up in the undergrowth like a little kitten in a box. Boomer sat a little way back where she could see both Racetrack and the Raptor. She took out her sidearm, checked the chamber, expertly clipping the gun back together, still feeling the throbbing on her face where the bullet had passed through – when was it now? Two days, three? She couldn't remember, the days had blurred. _I can't believe you forgot to check the chamber - I didn't forget - You need help, Sharon. Yeah. I need help._ She looked up. It was getting dark now, the jungle colors changing from greens to grays. Soon there wouldn't be any light left. Did this planet have moons? She didn't think so. Eventually she could hear Racetrack's breathing turn into sleep. Boomer leant back against a tree, watching silently in the darkness until she too began to slip into unconsciousness. It wasn't that she couldn't stay awake; it was that she didn't want to. She wanted to let the darkness slip over and cover her, leaving behind the thousand nightmare thoughts that were running through her head. Some officer _she'd_ turned out to be, sleeping on her watch. The chief would never sleep on his watch. She wondered if they would still be alive in the morning. But frak, she was a frakking Cylon. _I'm dead already, so why would I care?_


	4. Betrayal

Chapter 4

Betrayal

'Do you know how this virus got into the Navigation Computer?'

'Someone must have put it there, sir. Someone with security clearance.'

'So someone on this ship?'

'Yes.'

Adama sat at his desk studying the piece of paper. Whoever wrote this had been part of his crew. The heavy feeling of betrayal settled inside his stomach and sat there like a fiery stone, eating away at him from the inside.

Gaeta leant over and pointed to a section near the bottom of the sheet. 'Here is the virus, sir. What it's designed to do is produce a random set of coordinates which it then broadcasts to the fleet. When we confirmed the jump coordinates we were sending out random numbers.'

'And you think each ship was sent to a different location?'

'It looks that way, sir.'

Adama sighed wearily, 'So what are our chances of finding them again?'

'There are literally millions of possible coordinates. If by some luck we find even one of them…well, it would be a miracle.'

Adama took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Was this it, then? Had the Cylons finally defeated them, scattered them into dark space knowing that none of their ships could survive on their own? Even Galactica was dependent on the fleet for fuel and supplies.

He perched his glasses back on his nose and peered at the printout. What now? He had to do something, have some reply; the crew were looking to him to come up with a plan that would give them hope, however irrational. _When in doubt, do what you know._

'Mr Gaeta, draw up a search plan, try to cover as much area as you can. We need to find the fleet.'

'Yes sir.' Gaeta saluted and left the room.

Colonel Tigh eased back from the corner he'd been standing in, 'That's a tall order, Bill.'

Adama looked up slowly, 'What else can we do?'

'What if we don't find 'em?'

'Then we go find a planet of our own and start making babies.' Adama felt the determination hardening inside him. 'We are not going to give in; we are _not_ going to let the Cylons break us. We will do this, or we will die trying.'

Tigh nodded, accepting his words at face value. They had been through a lot together, but Saul's simple faith in him still managed to astound him. He didn't feel worthy of it, but in some indefinable way that faith gave him hope that maybe, just maybe, they could pull this off.

Colonel Tigh sat down heavily in the chair opposite, scraping it to the side so he could stretch out his legs. The old wooden desk sat squat between them, a comforting reminder of all the times they'd spent right here, chewing over old memories or just shooting the breeze. Adama eased out of his stiff formality and felt the tension inside him undo a notch. Saul was the only person under his command who had any inkling at all of his personal life - of the divorce, of Zak's death…of Lee's – well, just Lee.

'Is our new Cylon awake yet?' the question took Adama by surprise.

'We don't know he's a Cylon.'

'Aw, C'mon Bill. He shows up in CIC at the same time as a Cylon Base Star, same time as someone just happens to hack into our Nav Computer and plant a virus that sends the whole fleet to frakking gods know where. Seems like a mighty big bunch of coincidences to me.'

'Maybe.' Adama fingered the sheet of paper, staring carefully at the lines of computer code. It didn't seem much, those few marks on the page, but nearly fifty thousand lives hung in the balance because of it.

'Did Baltar make it off Kobol?' he asked suddenly.

'Yeah, he did.'

'Get him to test the new prisoner. I want to know if he really is a Cylon.'

'And if he is?'

'Then he's a Cylon.'

'And if he's not?'

Adama shrugged, 'Well, I guess we figure that one out when we get there.'

'So you're gonna keep him alive?'

'Until I have a reason not to.'

Tigh grunted. Adama knew that if he'd had his way, Saul would probably have airlocked the prisoner three hours ago. But then he'd always been one to think with his fists. Not exactly the statesman.

'And Apollo?'

Adama bristled, 'What about him?'

'It was all for your benefit. _You_ know that.'

'He put a gun to your head, Saul.'

'Yes he did. He ain't the first and he sure as hell won't be the last.' Tigh gave a dry chuckle that began and ended somewhere in the back of his throat, 'C'mon Bill, he was never going to shoot me, he was just trying to get your attention.'

'Well, he got it.' Adama's voice was tight.

'We're up against it, Bill, I don't need to tell you that. He's a good pilot and a good CAG.'

'He's a disgrace to the uniform.'

'Yeah. That too.'

'There's no excusing what he did. Just because he's my son doesn't mean he's above the law, and what he did was mutiny.'

Tigh eased back in his chair, 'None of us are above the law.'

Adama took off his glasses and looked directly at his old friend, 'You think I overreacted.' It was a statement, not a question.

'Now I didn't say that-'

'But you thought it,'

'Just, hell, it crossed my mind what you would have done if some other pilot had gone to Caprica with that Cylon Raider. If it hadn't been Starbuck…'

'Laura Roslin is dangerous. She's a poison on my ship. And it isn't just Starbuck. Now she's turned Lee against me.'

'Like I said, looked to me like it was you he was talking to, not her.'

Adama was quiet for a moment. It was rare for Saul to come out with something like this, he usually stayed well clear of any sort of political or philosophical debate. And he never second guessed his decisions.

'He said I had no right to throw away democracy simply because the President made a bad decision.' Adama said it half to himself.

Tigh gave an amused snort, 'Well, she made a bad decision alright, I'll give her that. She went up against you and lost. Look, who cares about the law now? The fleet is gone; our backs are against the wall. What the frak does it matter now anyway?'

Adama smiled grimly. Saul was right. What did it matter? The most important thing was their survival, not worrying about who was right or wrong. But then, if they just threw away the rules, what would they be left with? They'd turn into a bunch of lawless bandits, and the civilization they represented would really be gone. _Gods_, he thought with a start, he was beginning to sound like Lee now. But whichever way he looked at it Lee was wrong; he couldn't just break the rules, even if he did it because he thought he was saving them. It didn't work that way. Lee had disobeyed a direct order and threatened his XO with a firearm. If they were to survive, they needed to hold onto the discipline of a fighting unit. Now, more than ever, the chain of command had to remain solid and true. And as the Commander he _had_ to know that his crew would obey him. Lee had to be punished - but more than that, he had to be _seen_ to be punished. Mutiny in a time of war was a court martial offence. But then, what was he going to do, execute his own son? No way. Apart from anything else, their race was in tatters; there were so few of them left that it made no sense for them to start killing their own. If they went down that road then they wouldn't need the frakking Cylons. Maybe Saul was right - the rules should go. Some of them, anyway. This was his ship, his command, his crew. It was his call. Maybe the way forward was to keep the rules that worked for their survival and forget the rest.

Saul had kept quiet, waiting for him to figure it all out.

'Is Lee back yet?' Adama finally asked.

'No, they got the survey team out but there was no sign of Boomer or Racetrack. Apollo took a Raptor down to the surface for another pass.' Adama felt a rush of pride. Saul was right; Lee _was_ a good CAG, and a good officer. He gave that bit extra for the people under his command, and the crew respected him - not just because he was the commander's son, but in spite of it.

'When he gets back tell him to report to the Brig. He'll be sharing the cells with Laura Roslin.' At least the crew would see he was being punished. It was only a gesture, but it would do for now.

'With Roslin?' Tigh raised an eyebrow, 'Thought you said the woman was poison?'

'She is. But he's made his bed...'

Tigh smiled and shook his head, 'I'm damn glad I never had any kids,' he scuffed back the chair as he stood up and headed for the door.

Adama didn't look up as the hatch door closed, leaving him alone in his quarters. He held the thin sheet of paper between his fingers. Just those few lines of computer code represented the antithesis of everything he believed in, everything he stood for. Whoever had planted this thing on his ship was probably walking around right now undetected, blending in as one of his crew. It could be anyone, any of his CIC staff – Dee, Gaeta, or maybe one of the pilots, the deckhands, or the marines…all of them had sworn an oath to protect and serve the fleet, and he knew each one of them by face, if not by name. The betrayal felt personal. It was one thing for the Cylons to destroy his home world, to try and wipe out every member of his race - that was horrific on a huge scale - but it still stayed out there, beyond him in some way. But this, this enemy within, _this_ felt like a personal violation, a dirty act of betrayal.

Now _all_ his relationships were suspect. Adama was proud of the trust he placed in his crew, but now that trust itself had to be held in suspicion. Now no one could be left to just carry out their orders; everyone had to be watched. And that was no way to run a Battlestar.

He shook his head, and put the sheet of paper down carefully to one side. He wouldn't let the Cylons destroy their trust in each other. He wouldn't let them spread their poison from within.

He took the lid off his pen and started leafing through the rest of the paperwork. On the desk in front of him was the photo of him as a young pilot with his two sons smiling at the camera. It was now two years since Zak had died. It seemed like no time at all. There were moments when he still felt the grief as fresh and raw as the day it had happened. Maybe this was the sort of pain that never went away. He wondered what Zak would have done. Would he have sided with Roslin? No, it was Lee who had high aspirations and high ideals, Lee who was the dreamer, Lee who, ironically, made the better viper pilot. Which was why Zak was dead and Lee wasn't. But now it looked like all his high ideals were going to undo him as well.

This wasn't the way he thought it would go. It had been bad enough when Starbuck had confessed to putting Zak in a viper when she should have failed him for basic flight. When she'd told him _that_ he'd felt like strangling her. She _should_ have failed him for basic flight. But then was it really her fault? He'd pulled so many strings and called in so many favors to even get Zak into flight school that perhaps Lee was right and he _was_ to blame. It certainly felt like it. His blame. His burden. His grief. His son. But in the end Zak was dead because he hadn't made the grade. And if Starbuck had failed Zak for basic flight, he'd be alive today. But her emotions blinded her. That's what she'd said.

And now he had Laura Roslin in the Brig. If he was being brutally honest with himself he had to admit that he wasn't quite sure why. When he'd taken down the presidency he'd been going with his gut. And sometimes those decisions didn't always come clear straight away. Sometimes it was only afterwards that the pieces fitted together. He knew what Saul Tigh thought about it – he thought he'd made it too personal, that this was about Starbuck. Saul didn't know the half of it. He didn't know the lie about Earth or that Laura Roslin had told Starbuck the truth. But even if he factored in that extra layer of deceit, he still didn't think Laura Roslin was in the Brig because she had told Starbuck he'd lied. And he hadn't locked her up out of guilt or shame when his lie had been found out. He was still comfortable with his decision to pretend he knew about Earth. It had been the right thing to do – it had given them all hope and a sense of purpose, hell it had probably kept them alive up until now. No, it was the feeling of betrayal that stuck in his craw. Roslin had betrayed him and it felt personal. It felt like family. The thought struck him hard. Laura Roslin, family? He realised with a jolt that his feelings for her had crossed a line. He wondered how he hadn't seen it, that imperceptible creep of a relationship from one side of the fence to the other, the crossing of a boundary from the outside to the inside. And with that realization, the thought struck him - what was he going to do, put everyone he cared about in the Brig? Now that he looked at it again, maybe Tigh was right, maybe he _had_ gotten too close to this whole thing.

He made his way quietly to her cell. She was sleeping now. He gestured the guard to leave the room and he stood silently, watching her. Was this woman such a danger to him? She was smart, but he liked that. There had been a time when they'd worked well together. They'd made some tough decisions, and it had felt good to be on the same side. But that was before her religious conversion. How could he let her lead the fleet using odd verses of scripture that she had picked out of the scrolls of Pythia? Maybe the pressure had gotten to her. Over the last few weeks she'd changed. She'd gone from a rational, sane human being to some religious nut. And based on her words and her actions it was clear that she wasn't capable of acting as President anymore - and there was no way he could allow that snake Baltar to take over as Vice President. Better to dissolve the Presidency completely than to let that happen. He realised with a flood of relief that he _had_ made the right decision; it wasn't because of Starbuck, or even because of Roslin. It was for the good of the fleet. He stood for a moment appreciating the clarity he'd come to and realizing that once Apollo saw it he'd understand why he'd taken the action he had. And when Lee came back to him, maybe he'd get at least one part of himself back.


	5. SAR

**Chapter 5 **

**SAR**

**Day 2  
**

It was the pelting rain that woke her, dripping off the leaves in huge blobs that drenched her hair in seconds and ran down her neck into the heart of her flying suit. It was still dark. She got up and helped Racetrack to her feet, both of them squeezing into what was left of the Raptor and huddling together to keep warm. They didn't speak, but endured the discomfort in silence, sitting there for what seemed like hours, staring into the blackness. She knew what Racetrack was thinking– the same as her - that the longer this went on, the more likely something had gone wrong. Galactica should have sent someone out by now. With that Base Star out of the way Commander Adama would have sent an SAR immediately. The longer this went on, the slimmer their chances of ever being rescued.

She felt Racetrack's weight shift next to her as she dozed off, her head leaning on one of the crumpled walls of the Raptor. She wished she could sleep too, but she was too cold and uncomfortable. Maybe she wasn't a Cylon after all, surely machines weren't supposed to feel like this?

As the dawn broke the rain eased off, giving way to blue skies and green, the sun brightening the air and twinkling off the leaves. The light was clear and fresh, emphasizing the lush beauty all around them. In another time, another place, she might have allowed a tiny fluttering of appreciation to ripple through her. But as it was, they were screwed. Besides, her teeth were chattering with cold and her face felt like it was on fire.

Racetrack stirred, groaning and rubbing her neck as she stumbled sleepily out of the Raptor, 'I guess that was the night,' she said, stretching and yawing. She squinted up at the sky. 'At least it looks like no more rain for a while.'

Boomer opened her mouth to say something, then winced, her hand reaching up protectively to the side of her face.

'You want me to take a look at that?' Racetrack pointed to the bandage.

Boomer shook her head. 'No, it's fine.'

'At least put some of this on, it'll stop any infection.' Racetrack reached over to the med kit and grabbed a phial of cream. She opened the cap and handed it over. Boomer obediently smeared it all over the top of the bandage.

'Boomer, you need to change that dressing. Here, let me do it,' Boomer hesitated, then shut her eyes and nodded. She sat down with her back against a tree and turned her face to the side. She felt Racetrack gently peel off the dressing, dab on the cream and cover the wound with a clean bandage. Racetrack didn't tell her what it looked like and Boomer didn't ask. Instead she kept her eyes closed, taking a deep breath as the cream stung the wound. It felt better, though; the sharp pain felt like it was at least trying to do some good. She put her head back against the tree and waited for the pain to die down. When she opened her eyes again a few minutes later she could see Racetrack watching her with concern.

'You OK?'

'Yeah.'

Racetrack put the cream carefully back in the med kit and tucked it back inside the back of the Raptor. She straightened, took a deep breath, 'So what now?'

Boomer looked around at the clearing the Raptor had carved. She tried to make it sound like she had a clue, 'We sit tight, wait for Galactica to send a rescue team. We should maybe scout around, make sure there aren't any Cylons nearby.' Somehow she couldn't bring herself to call them toasters anymore. They didn't look like toasters anyway - they looked like her.

They went through the motions of following protocol - tip-toeing through the jungle as silently as they could, making a wide arc around the crash site and avoiding the higher ground where they might be seen. Side arms at the ready, they hardly dared to breathe in case they stumbled across a Centurion foot patrol. _Or a group of Sharons going for a walk._ But in the end they saw nothing; only jungle vines and forest creatures. When they got back to the Raptor there was nothing left to do but sit and wait.

She must have crawled up to check the Beacon at least five times to make sure it was sending out a signal, but by the end of the day there was still no sign of anyone from Galactica.

'Maybe there's too much interference in the atmosphere,' offered Racetrack.

'They'd do low passes. We're already on high ground, so they should pick up a signal fairly easily. Might just be they haven't gotten to this sector yet. Or could be another Base Star showed up.'

'Then we're frakked.'

'Yeah.' She handed Racetrack another round of emergency rations, 'We are. Let's hope they're just doing a sweep of the rest of the planet first. Or getting the survey team out before us. Maybe they ran into some trouble over there and it's taking more time.'

'_Gods_, I hope they get here soon.'

'Yeah.' Did she sound convincing enough? Why would she even want to be rescued now? She remembered how it had been, back on Galactica. Her and the Chief - well, that was a mess - and that terrible feeling that she was going to get up one morning and really hurt someone. Was that really worth going back to? Only it was worse now. Now she _knew_ she was a Cylon. She shuddered. Galactica and the people there had meant everything to her. It had been her world – her life. Not any more. She had no life. But at least she could try and get Racetrack out of there in one piece. Maybe that was something worth doing.

Racetrack was watching her now, so she turned her attention to the darkening sky above them, 'Looks like its going to rain again,' she said.

They sat together in the space between the hatch and the ECO controls. The inside of the Raptor was so twisted and buckled that there wasn't enough space for either of them to stretch out at all. The first big plops of rain started to fall soon after they settled inside. It quickly became a torrent, drumming down hard on the leaves and dripping to the forest floor. Before long the ground around them was a wash of wet, the rain falling so hard that it bounced back off the ground and into the Raptor, splashing past their boots and soaking their clothes. They spent the second night curled up in a miserable huddle. When the rain eventually petered out Boomer was too cold and cramped to do anything but sit with her eyes wide open, staring into the dark.

**00000**

When Apollo finally reported to the Brig, the President was asleep and the lights were dimmed.

The Corporal on guard fumbled with the cell door, 'How'd it go on Kobol, Sir? Did you get our people out?'

'Most of them.'

The Corporal opened the door awkwardly. Apollo gave him a curt nod and walked stiffly inside. He didn't want to talk anymore. He heard the Corporal shuffle back to the guard station and sit down at the desk. He stood for a moment, looking quietly at his new home; a simple bed, washroom in one corner. Hell, there was a lot more space here than his tiny rack in the officer's dorm. He lay down heavily on the bed, closing his eyes and hoping sleep would come soon to his exhausted body. He'd been awake, what – nearly two days now? He sighed as he felt the bed take his weight. In some ways it was nicer here in the Brig than if he'd been in his rack - half the other officers were either dead or missing and at least here he didn't have to see all Starbuck's stuff lying around, reminding him of how she wasn't there. Lying around. Fooling around. Being around. Sleeping around. He shut his eyes tighter to squeeze out the memory of her, but instead all he could see was gun fire and Raptors and the gleaming metal of the Centurions as they'd tried to pin them down. He was aching all over, his muscles still taut from the horror of the last two days.

Kobol had been hell.

He took a deep breath, recoiling as the worst scenes kept replaying in his mind. They'd been lucky to get out of there alive. Lucky those toasters hadn't had time to finish building that anti-aircraft battery. If they had, the rescue team wouldn't have stood a chance. He stopped the thoughts, stopped the thinking, and willed himself to breathe, _don't think, don't feel_, just breathe, rest, and sleep. He held his breath, tried to focus on the bed he was lying on, on the space around him in this little cell. But that only led to a whole new set of associations - like how his father had put him in here and what he was going to do next. The old man wasn't going to let it go, that was for sure - and Colonel Tigh certainly wasn't going to forget in a hurry. Was his father really going to charge him with mutiny? Was he going to hand out the death penalty to his own son? Did he really care if he did?

'Captain Apollo? Are you awake?' Her voice was quiet in the dim light. He rolled over to face her. She was in the adjoining cell, her face pale inside the dark shadow of her hair.

'Captain, what happened? Are you alright?'

'Yeah, I'm fine.' He was glad to hear her voice, glad of any sort of distraction. He pushed himself up on his elbow so he could see her better. Her face was serious, concerned. 'What's been going on?' Of course she had questions; she must have been in here alone for two days now.

He sighed and closed his eyes. Where did he start?

He could hear her waiting for him to answer. 'How much do you know?' he said finally.

'I know that Commander Adama ordered the fleet to make an emergency jump. I don't know any more beyond that. The Corporal here has orders not to talk to me.'

Apollo smiled and shook his head. She was the President, for fraks sake. What the hell was his father playing at? 'Well, the best bit was when we lost the fleet.'

He couldn't help the grim smile, but gods, in the day and half since she'd been deposed they had lost everything. If it wasn't so bad it would have almost been funny.

She sat up straight on her bed, 'Oh my gods! How?'

'I'm not sure. We jumped away from a Base Star and when we came out the other side the fleet wasn't there.'

'We lost the whole fleet?' she enunciated the words slowly in the soft light.

'Yes, Madam President. The whole fleet.'

'But they're defenceless without Galactica - all those people!'

'Someone put a virus in the nav computer. It scattered the fleet.'

He heard her sharp intake of breath. 'What? Who?' she breathed quietly.

'We don't know. But it was an inside job.' She sat back for a moment, taking it all in.

'And is there any chance of finding the fleet?' her voice was almost a whisper.

He shrugged, then realized she probably couldn't see the gesture in the dim light. 'My father's doing everything he can to find them. The simple way is to go back to the last jump spot and hope the rest of the fleet go back there – but we need to wait for the Base Star to move off before we can do that.'

'And in the meantime we hope that none of the civilian ships try it while the Base Star is still there.'

'Exactly.' He was glad she was sharp. He was too tired to have to explain it all to her.

She sat quietly for a moment, 'And the Base Star – the one Lieutenant Thrace was supposed to destroy with the Raider?'

'Boomer and Racetrack took that one out.'

'They destroyed it?'

'Yeah, judging by the debris.'

'Thank the gods.'

'But they didn't make it. It looked like they blew themselves up with the Base Star.'

'Oh my gods, I'm so sorry.'

'It's not your fault. It was always going to be a suicide mission.'

'Captain, you don't have to make me feel better. Commander Adama's first choice was to send Lieutenant Thrace and the Raider, and by making sure that wasn't possible, I effectively ensured the death of those two women.'

'If Starbuck had gone then she probably wouldn't have made it back either. You did what you thought was best, that's all anyone can do.'

She was silent for a few minutes. Just when he thought the conversation was over and he was about to try to sleep again he heard her whispering quietly to herself. He could just make out some of the words – it was the prayer for the dead. He waited quietly until she'd finished. He had no prayers in him, he realized, not for Boomer or Racetrack or Starbuck, and least of all for himself. He felt dry inside, as if all the warm, moist, alive parts of him were slowly shrivelling to dust. He couldn't remember the exact point where his hope had gone, but he knew it was sometime after Starbuck had disappeared, so the two had to be connected. She must have sensed the way his thoughts were moving because she spoke up suddenly, 'What about Lieutenant Thrace? If we've jumped away, then how will she find us when she retrieves the arrow?'

So was now a good time to say to her that Starbuck didn't have a hope of even reaching Caprica in that Raider, let alone getting her hands on the arrow? But what was the point? She didn't need more guilt. And besides, Starbuck would be dead by now whatever. Neither Laura Roslin nor his father had offered her a survivable option. He took a deep breath. '_If_ she retrieves the arrow, I don't know what she'll do. Maybe go to Kobol and try to meet us there. Only problem is, the place is swarming with Cylons.'

'There are Cylons on Kobol?'

'Yeah. A lot of them.'

'You've been there? To Kobol?'

'I'm the CAG. It was my job to head the search and rescue.'

'Oh my gods. The survey team? Did you find them?'

His voice was quiet, resigned, 'Yeah, we found them. We got most of them out, but we got hit pretty hard.'

'Your father must be very proud of you.'

'Which is why he's put me in the Brig. It's OK, Madam President, but my father isn't proud of me at all. I put a gun to the XO's head. He's not going to forget that anytime soon.'

'But he's kept you as his CAG…'

'We're so short of pilots it would be crazy for him to take me off duty. Believe me, this isn't over. I'll do my job and I'll probably face a court martial at the end of it.'

'Captain, I want to say how sorry I am that I dragged you into this, that was not my intention at all…'

'Don't be sorry. I didn't do it for you. I did it for…nothing, as it turns out.'

'That's not true. You took a stand.'

'Yeah.' He laid back and looked up at the ceiling. _And look where it got me. _He wondered where Starbuck was now, whether she was even alive. It hadn't been much of a goodbye. He'd been so full of rage and jealousy – but hell, she'd been frakking Gaius _frakking_ Baltar. Frak. Frak. Frak. It wasn't the way he wanted to remember her. They'd spent their last time together having a fight. Trust Kara. She never made anything easy. He sighed. Now he had to deal with her absence, and the chances were she wouldn't be back. How much more could he bear to lose before this was over? Maybe the Cylons should just finish them all off and be done with it. At least that way it would be over quickly. But it didn't look like they needed the Cylons, they were already doing a fine job of destroying themselves without any Cylon intervention at all. He couldn't believe that his father had taken down the Presidency. Now, of all times, they needed to be united. If they kept going this way, there wasn't going to be any humanity left worth saving.


	6. Q&A

**Chapter 6**

**Q&A**

'So,' Baltar picked up a test tube and examined it against the light. 'How _is_ the President? Is she well?'

Adama felt his jaw tighten.

'That's none of your damn business,' Tigh growled before Adama had a chance to open his mouth.

'Oh?' Baltar put the test tube down with a click, 'Well, as the _Vice President_ I think it _is_ my business, actually.' He turned to Adama. 'And _as_ the Vice President, I would like to express my outrage at your rather crude attempt to destroy the very foundations of our democracy.'

Adama sighed. He didn't need this. 'If you _were_ still the Vice President you would be in the Brig with Laura Roslin. You are only here because of your scientific expertise, Dr Baltar, nothing more. Please don't forget that.'

Baltar stiffened. 'Right,' He picked up another test tube, held it up to the light and then carefully put it back in the box. 'Well, I suppose that clears that one up, doesn't it? Though I must admit I _am_ surprised. I didn't think staging a coup d'état was quite your style.'

Colonel Tigh stepped forward to say something, but Adama held up his hand, 'Save it for the press, Dr Baltar. If we ever find them again.' He paused, hoping Baltar would understand the implications; the man wasn't a fool, even though he acted like one. Without the fleet Baltar had no power base. No reporters. No voters. He was totally dependent on the military. Adama watched as this realization dawned on him.

'Right,' Baltar recovered smoothly. 'So if you're not here to discuss the well-being of the President I can only assume you're here for the test results.' He gave them a forced smile and walked over to a computer set against the side wall. 'Well, I think it's just about ready.' Baltar clicked on a few keys, his back to them. Then he half turned, raising an eyebrow with a smile. 'I'm pleased to say that your _latest_ prisoner is completely and utterly human.'

Adama took a deep breath as he heard Tigh let out an exasperated snort. _Human_. In some ways that raised more problems than it solved.

'You look disappointed, Commander. Would you rather I faked the results so that you could _have_ your Cylon informer?'

Adama frowned in annoyance. 'Is there any way the test could be wrong?'

Baltar gave a short barking laugh. 'No. Emphatically not.'

'Take a look at this,' Adama handed him a sheet of paper.

'It's a medical report,' Baltar said flatly.

'Read it.'

Baltar took a deep breath. 'The prisoner's vitals are fine. He's still unconscious. And what?' Baltar looked up expectantly.

'Read to the end.'

Baltar looked back at the paper, frowning. 'I'm sorry Commander, I fail to see-'

'Ishay concludes her report by raising concerns as to whether or not the prisoner is unconscious because he had been poisoned or drugged. Is it possible that he was given something that could interfere with the accuracy of the test?'

'Commander,' Baltar held him in a sincere and patronizing stare. 'This test works by subjecting a blood sample to the kind of radiation that destroys Cylon cells. A poison or a drug shouldn't affect the-.'

'Shouldn't? So theoretically-?'

Baltar looked a little flustered now, running his hand quickly through his hair. 'OK. Yes, you're right. The samples do depend on a blood test - and yes - I suppose it _is_ within the realms of possibility that there _could_ exist a substance that might mask the effects of the radiation. So yes, _theoretically_ the prisoner could have something in his blood that screwed the results. Yes.'

'Can you test his blood, see what's in it?'

'Well, I – obviously I could screen the blood for known toxins, but the process is far from comprehensive. If he has been poisoned or drugged, there is no guarantee that I'd be able to find whatever it is that has been put into his system.'

'So he could still be a Cylon?' Tigh was looking intently at Baltar.

Baltar turned from Tigh back to Adama. 'Commander, this is wild speculation. I know of _no_ substance that would have this sort of affect on the results. And frankly, if it _is_ the case then I might as well stop testing right now because it would completely undermine the whole basis for the Cylon detector – which, as you know, is that the results can't be faked.'

'How long would it take for the drug to clear his system?'

Baltar shrugged. 'I can't answer that without knowing what it is – a few days, I'd imagine. The fact that he is still unconscious suggests that it's still active.'

Adama nodded, 'We'll test him again when he wakes up.' He took back the medical report and examined it carefully. Ishay's report was thorough. In spite of her limitations she was doing a good job. She wasn't a trained physician and he knew he would feel a lot easier if they found the fleet soon and got Doc Cottle back on board.

'Thank you, Dr Baltar,' he muttered, ignoring Baltar's black look as he left the lab. He had his own misgivings about the efficacy of the test - and of Dr Baltar's ability to administer it fairly. So far it appeared to have been accurate, but he could see now that for a variety of reasons it couldn't be relied upon.

They were silent for a while, he and Tigh both waiting until they were well out of earshot of Baltar's lab before either said anything. Halfway back to the CIC Tigh finally spoke up. 'So you think the Cylons have found a way to dodge the test?'

Adama glanced over at him with a frown. 'It's a possibility.'

'I never trusted that damn test anyway.'

'You don't trust Baltar, Saul. Period.'

'You're right. I don't.'

'No. Neither do I.'

**00000**

Desmond kept his eyes shut as he drifted slowly awake. He was still in the hatch. The familiar bed, the recycled air, even the hangover headache was something he'd come to associate with waking up there. The only thing missing was the alarm. It should have been starting its insistent cycle by now. Maybe Kelvin had got it – but then the shock hit him as he remembered that Kelvin was dead, and his hangover headache the side-effect of having killed him.

Murderer's guilt.

Well, _technically_ he hadn't killed him. Falling on that rock had killed him - or broken his neck anyway. And he hadn't even pushed him that hard. But that didn't change anything. Without that shove, Kelvin wouldn't have fallen.

That made it his fault.

Not that he'd meant to hurt him, Kelvin had been the nearest thing to a friend he'd had for three long years.

He fought his way through the guilt and soreness to try to get up, find more booze and drink it all away. As his consciousness tipped him fully awake he remembered; the plane crash, the survivors, John Locke smashing the computer, the failsafe key. Ah, yes. He'd turned into light - then found himself in that military bunker, those eyes looking at him.

He blinked awake, finding himself staring up at a gray ceiling. This wasn't his hatch. He turned his head slightly, shifting his focus down to a line of bars running to the floor. He was in some kind of cell. He closed his eyes again, letting this new reality seep into him more slowly.

There was a click, then a voice, 'the prisoner is awake, sir,'

He froze.

_Prisoner?_

What the hell was going on? Where was he? He sat up slowly, swaying as the familiar dizziness and nausea threatened to knock him straight back down again. Once he'd established enough stability to keep himself upright, he risked a quick glance over to where the voice had come from. Outside his cell was an armed guard dressed in some sort of black combat gear. Flak jacket, helmet, automatic rifle; the works.

_Shite_.

He was in trouble.

He thought back to the last picture he'd had before he passed out - those rows of eyes all staring at him and the man in the middle of the room dressed in some sort of military uniform. Of course, these must be Kelvin's people finally come to get him. They must have found Kelvin's body. Would they believe him if he said it was an accident?

But then what about John Locke smashing the computer? That hadn't been an accident. They weren't going to like that. And then the failsafe - God only knew what that had done. The picture was getting clearer now. He just hoped they'd let him explain.

Desmond licked his lips nervously. The guard was watching him. Desmond looked away, realizing as he did so that he was naked, his legs and groin just about covered by a thin, rough blanket. They must have taken his clothes when they got him out of the hatch. He pulled the blanket self-consciously around his waist, acutely aware of the hard stare of the guard. All that time in the hatch he'd often imagined being rescued, but not like this.

The cell was small, about ten feet square with a toilet and a washbasin in one corner. On the floor by the bed was a glass of water and what looked like a pile of clothes. He eyed the clothes warily. Were these some sort of prison issue? If they were, then whoever held him planned to keep him here for a significant length of time. Either that or they'd simply removed his clothes as a precaution - some sort of quarantine. He hoped it was the latter. Kelvin had kept him locked up in that hatch with stories of how the Island air wasn't safe. Maybe these people believed that the Island was contaminated and that was why they'd taken his clothes. But that didn't explain the armed guard. And Kelvin had known that the Island air was perfectly safe, so chances were that these people did too.

Kelvin had been lying to him all along. Three years of lies. He hadn't deserved to die for it, though.

The guilt slapped him hard, making Desmond squirm uncomfortably, ducking mentally away from the familiar gut wrenching remorse. He hated what he'd done to Kelvin. He hated himself for it. And if it hadn't been for Penny's note he would have killed himself that day. He had found it, tucked inside a paperback novel. Her words had kept him alive. Her love had kept him alive. She had said she was waiting for him. And now, for Penny's sake, he had to focus on getting out of here. That was the only thing that kept him going. Penny. And her letter.

His heart lurched as he realized that the letter was gone with his clothes. He'd kept it safely in his pocket, wrapped carefully in a plastic bag. They'd probably burnt the whole lot. He bit his lip, pushing away the feelings of despair that threatened to overwhelm him. That had been the last thing he had of her. She'd held that paper, she'd written the words. And now even that was gone. He felt himself spinning into hopelessness again. This wasn't helping. He had to get a grip.

He shifted to the end of the bed, easing his legs over the side and wrapping the blanket awkwardly round him so that he could maneuver himself to the floor without revealing too much. He turned his back on the guard and stepped into the clothes; a pair of jogging bottoms, a sweatshirt. They were both a sort of non-descript navy blue color with the same name inside 'Lt Calder' then a serial number. Someone else's clothes. Not prison issue then. That was a relief. There were no shoes or socks. Once dressed he sat back heavily on the bed, his muscles shaking. He reached down and drank the water.

Would they believe him when he told them what had happened to Kelvin? Would they believe it was a genuine mistake? And what about John Locke? What had happened to him? And Eko and Charlie? The failsafe must have done something because he was here. Alive. He tried to think back to those last few minutes in the hatch. How long had it taken for him to crawl the length of the service tunnel to activate the failsafe? Long enough for them to get out?

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the hatch door swinging open. The guard snapped smartly to attention. It was the older man, the one he'd locked eyes with before he passed out. Desmond automatically stood up, clutching the edge of the bed. He still wasn't sure how well his legs would hold him up.

The man walked up to his cell, pausing about a foot away from the bars.

Desmond cleared his throat. 'I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding brother.' The man didn't say anything. Desmond swallowed nervously, glancing across at the guard. He noticed there were two now. That wasn't good.

'Who are you?' the older man's icy tone snapped his attention away from the guards.

'I'm Desmond.' Desmond hesitated for a moment, deciding quickly that being honest about Kelvin was probably sensible, given the circumstances, 'Look, if this is about Kelvin –'

'Kelvin,' the man said it in such a way that Desmond had no idea whether or not he knew who Kelvin was.

'Look, it was an accident, OK? I pushed him. I didn't mean to, he just fell and-.' Desmond's words trailed off when he saw the expression on the other man's face.

'So you're not alone?' the man asked.

'Alone? I-' Desmond paused, 'Look, who are you? Are you with the Dharma Initiative?' He saw the other man frown, 'Kelvin's people,' he clarified.

'Where's Kelvin?'

'He's dead.' Desmond went silent. He felt shock permeate his thoughts. 'It was an accident.'

'Who else is with you?'

He swallowed hard. 'It's just me,' he said quietly.

He watched carefully as the man's eyes narrowed in suspicion. 'How did you get on board this ship?'

Desmond felt a wave of confusion. 'We're on a ship? We're not on the Island?'

'What were you doing in the CIC?'

Desmond gave the man a startled look. 'Are you from the Navy? Is this a rescue ship? Did you get the others off the Island? The survivors from the crash?'

'How did you get on board this ship?' The man repeated the question, his voice hard and cold.

Desmond felt a sudden wave of panic. He'd assumed these people had brought him here, so why were they asking _him_? 'I have no idea how I got here. I was in the Dharma Station and the next thing I knew I was here. Look, who are you? Why have you put me here? What am I supposed to have done? Is it the computer? Is that the problem? The failsafe-' Of course, Locke and the others must have got away, leaving him alone in the hatch with his hand still on that key. Maybe it wasn't Kelvin that was bothering them; maybe it was what had happened with the computer.

'Tell me what you did to the computer.'

'I-' He gulped in an anxious breath, 'Look, it was an accident, OK? The computer was broken so I- I used the failsafe key. I was trying to fix it.'

'You were trying to _fix_ the computer?'

'Well, no. It was beyond fixing. I was trying to save everyone. Kelvin told me about the failsafe, he, he said it would –' What had Kelvin said? That it would _burst the dam_ - but what exactly did that mean? And how was he supposed to explain it now? 'Look, I was only trying to help – we were waiting for replacements.'

The man just stared at him impassively. Desmond felt his guts twist in fear. Were these people Hostiles? If they were, then they wouldn't care about Kelvin or the hatch. He wasn't sure about the uniforms though, they looked too slick for Hostiles, too military.

'Look, I pressed that button for three years. And then the computer broke. I was trying to save everyone – I was trying to save the world.'

The other man looked down slightly and shook his head.

'And it must have worked, brother, because we're still here.' At that moment Desmond was struck by how ridiculous it all sounded. Mirrored in the expression on the other man's face were his own feelings about it. Even so, it was the truth. He had activated the failsafe because he had thought that everything he knew was at risk.

When Kelvin had first dragged him out of the sea, he'd woken up in the underground bunker and seen Kelvin at the computer, 'I'm saving the world,' Kelvin had told him. And as crazy as it sounded, that was why he had done it. Even if the man facing him didn't believe that the world needed to be saved, he could at least understand that Desmond had thought it did. And the way this conversation was going, Desmond needed him to believe that at least his motives had been good.

'Where are you from, Desmond?'

Desmond let out the breath he was holding. It wasn't that the man had softened, but at least his questions had moved away from what he had done to something a little more personal.

Desmond took another breath. 'Glasgow.'

'Glasgow?'

'Scotland. The United Kingdom. Britain.'

'Which colony?'

'Colony? You mean district? – Um, West End. Off Byres Road. Look, I'm a British citizen. I just want to go home.'

'Are you a Cylon?'

'If I knew what that was I could tell you, brother.'

'According to our tests, you're human.'

Desmond winced. 'Excuse me?'

'Are you working for the Cylons?' the man persisted.

'What?'

'You heard me.'

'I'm sorry – look, I'm not working for anyone, someone must have drugged me and brought me here. I haven't done anything – I'm a British citizen. Can I talk to someone at the embassy?'

The man didn't react at all. Then he signaled to one of the guards to open the hatch door, 'Dim the lights,' he murmured as he left the room. 'Let him rest.'

Desmond flopped back onto the bed as the man disappeared through the door. The guard flicked a switch and plunged him into a dim gloom. He lay back on the bed, deflated. He didn't get it. It didn't add up. The man had been dressed in a navy uniform and had told him that they were on a ship. If this was a US Military operation then he would have been rescued and he wouldn't have ended up naked on the floor under a desk. He must have been drugged when he'd activated the failsafe – that feeling of lightness - of course; they'd pumped some sort psychotropic drug into the air. But why? Unless of course they'd just put him there to rattle him. But why would they do that? Maybe they thought he'd vandalized their computer. Did they think he was a Hostile? And what had that man meant about being human? That had to be a joke, right? Only there hadn't been any humor behind the words. Something wasn't right. He rubbed his hands nervously over his face. Even three years in the Hatch hadn't scared him like this. 'I'm sorry, Penny,' he whispered quietly, 'I'm so sorry.'


	7. Smoke and Mirrors

Chapter 7

Smoke and Mirrors

**Day 3**

The sound came out of the dawn like something rattling and hooting and smashing in the trees around them. Boomer froze, snapping fully awake in an instant. She wasn't sure what instinct kicked in, whether it was some frakking Cylon sixth sense or something, but she just knew they had to get the hell out of there. _Fast_. She leapt up, grabbing Racetrack's arm, her breath catching in terror as she saw a black column of smoke screeching out of the trees and heading straight towards them.

'Run!' she screamed, practically dragging Racetrack after her. Racetrack looked back as the smoke thing reared over them, her shocked face blanching in surprise, her whole body going into shock before she suddenly clicked into gear and started running too, gasping and panting as she pushed her legs into stride. The thing was close behind them, so close that Boomer could feel the cold air of it on her neck. She kept tight hold of Racetrack's arm and willed her body to move faster. They dashed through the trees, weaving and twisting, running as fast as they could down the diagonal slope of the hill. She could still hear the thing behind her - one quick glance backwards confirmed that it wasn't far behind.

It was gaining on them.

She tightened her grip on Racetrack's arm, pulling her along as they stumbled over roots and branches. Racetrack's breath was coming in dragging gasps, her feet less sure as she began to tire. She gave a yelp as she tripped on a root and fell heavily. Boomer grabbed her, dragging her off to the side, changing direction to try and gain them a few more precious yards. Down to their left there was a steep bank with what looked like a pool – at least she hoped it was a pool, the dawn light was still gray and she couldn't make out any details. She hesitated a split second, and then jumped, pulling Racetrack over with her. The smoke thing lunged as they leapt, whistling past them as they fell with a splash into the deep water below.

The shock of the cold water disorientated her for a moment and she cringed, waiting for the thing to scoop them up or for some hard surface to crush them from below. But the water held them, softening their descent until they slowed and turned, moving back up gently towards the surface. Boomer held her breath. She was still gripping Racetrack's arm and didn't let go, holding her down at the bottom of the pool, keeping her under the water for as long as she dared. She realized that she could stay under here a long time without even needing to come up for air. It felt safe here, peaceful. When she felt Racetrack struggle against her and saw the look of panic in her eyes she quickly let her go, watching from below as she bobbed up to the surface.

Boomer followed more slowly. As she surfaced all she could hear were the sounds of Racetrack gasping and spluttering in the still morning air. How in hell wasn't the smoke thing going to hear _that_? Maybe it had gone. She swam quietly to the edge of the pool and crouched below an overhang. Racetrack was still breathing heavily, her eyes wide with terror.

'What the _frak_ was that?' Racetrack gasped, scanning the top horizon.

'I don't know.' Boomer peered up at the overhang. 'I think it was a Cylon.'

She pulled her head back under the cover of the rock, leaning back against its smooth walls. She swallowed nervously. That was close. That thing had been inches away. Was it some sort of Cylon they hadn't seen yet? It must be, only this Cylon hadn't stroked her face and said it loved her. Perhaps only the Cylons that looked like her did that. Maybe all the rest of them were out to kill her too.

'_Frak_! So what do we do now? Do you think it's gone?'' Racetrack was still breathing heavily.

Boomer wasn't out of breath at all. The differences between them were becoming more obvious to her now. Had she always been able to run so far without being out of breath? Had she always been able to stay underwater for so long? Why hadn't she noticed these things before? OK. So she could live underwater and run for miles. _Great_. Is this what it meant to be a frakking Cylon? But however much she resented it, another part of her realised that it had kept them alive. At one point back there she'd been practically carrying Racetrack. So she was strong too. Had Racetrack realized what was happening? She glanced over at her. Racetrack just seemed scared; too scared to notice.

'So what now?' Racetrack caught her gaze.

Boomer squinted up at the overhang. She fully expected the thing to come back; surely it wasn't going to let them get away that easily?

'We can't stay here,' she said quickly. 'It's not safe.' She looked around. The light was growing brighter now. She could see the trees and colors beginning to emerge from the gray. A cursory glance around confirmed that they'd been lucky; they were in a small pool surrounded by rocks with a high cliff on one side. There was no sign of the Cylon smoke thing. 'I guess we get out of here.'

Racetrack nodded. On the other side of the pool was a shallow beach. They waited another few minutes, neither of them willing to risk swimming across in full view of whatever might still be lurking up on the cliff face. In the end she decided to edge around the pool, keeping close to the shadows and slipping into the thick undergrowth on the opposite bank.

When they pulled themselves out of the water Boomer had fully expected them to be met by a Cylon foot patrol. But there was no sign of that smoke thing, no sign of any Centurions or Sharons or whatever the hell else the Cylons had in their army. She couldn't believe it wasn't coming after them. Perhaps it was a primitive kind of machine and they'd fooled it when they jumped over that cliff. Either way they were screwed. They had no food or rations and no hope of rescue; without the beacon there was no way anyone from Galactica could find them. They couldn't even defend themselves - their side arms were sopping wet and probably wouldn't fire a round until they could dry them out and clean them properly. But they couldn't risk going back to the Raptor. It was probably swarming with Cylons.

'Maybe we'll find the survey team,' she said hopefully, trying to give them both something to cling on to. It was probably dumb and patronizing, but what else was she going to say? – _Hey Racetrack, let's just wander round here until the Cylons get us or we die of hunger_? Racetrack gave her a look that told her she realized what a load of hot air that was, but there was something else there too, something in Racetrack's expression that told her that she appreciated what she was trying to do, however much it sucked.

Boomer started walking. She hadn't chosen any particular direction - both of them knew that they weren't going to bump into anyone they knew in the few square miles they could cover in a day. The survey team could have crashed anywhere on this planet and the chances of finding them here were less than zero. Neither of them said that, though, and Boomer kept up the lie, going through the motions that they would find some way to get back to Galactica before the Cylons found them.

She wondered how long it would take before they both died here. There was fresh water, and trees that might have fruit that was good to eat, and maybe they could find some meat if they could catch something that looked remotely edible. But what was the point? What if another Base Star had already taken the place of the one they'd nuked? The fleet would be forced to move on. Chances were they'd already been abandoned and left for dead. They trudged on in silence, slowly letting the heat of the morning dry out their wet clothes.

**00000**

The dim light was strangely comforting. Apollo was surprised by how quiet it was. It was peaceful here without the noise of the officers' dorm. Ironically he'd slept better than he had since – well, since it had all began, really, since the Cylon attack. He rolled over on the bed and sat up. The President was already awake, sitting quietly on her own cot reading from scripture. She smiled when she saw him, and peered over her glasses.

'Did you sleep well Captain?'

He stretched and yawned. 'Yes I did, as a matter of fact.'

She put the book down on her lap and smoothed the cover, taking off her glasses. 'Captain Apollo, can I ask you a question?'

He smiled. She was always so direct, a bit like his father, actually. And he wasn't surprised she had questions, he still couldn't believe that his father had just left her here for two days without telling her what the hell was going on. Even if he didn't like what she'd done, she still deserved to know. He watched her as she thought for a moment, choosing her words carefully. 'Captain Apollo, are you able to tell me why Commander Adama reacted so strongly when I asked Lieutenant Thrace to take the Raider to Caprica?'

He pushed the sleep out of his foggy brain and tried to answer her as clearly as he could. 'The Raider was a military asset. It wasn't your call.'

'Yes, I see that, but this is about more than the Raider, isn't it? There's something missing here. What else is going on that I don't know about?'

Apollo sighed, rubbing his eyes, now feeling very much awake, like someone had just thrown cold water in his face. Maybe it was the mention of Starbuck that did it, and yeah, the tearing in his guts was just, what? Missing her? Her absence was like a huge empty hole pulling him in. And now the President wanted to know why it _mattered_ that Starbuck had gone? _Frak_. What the hell was he supposed to say to that? There was no way he could ever be objective about it. And wasn't it obvious why his father felt the same way? Starbuck was family - she and Zak had been about to get _married_ for fraks sake. He winced as he remember that night he had gone round there, Zak drunk on the couch and him and Starbuck, well… nothing happened.

Nothing ever happened.

Everything and nothing. He still felt guilty about it though. If Zak hadn't woken up, would they have-? Crap, yeah, _he_ would have, he'd have frakked her right there on the table with his brother in the same room. That was the first night he'd met her, hell, they'd only known each other five hours. The memory still made him wince in shame. But nothing had happened, had it? At least not in reality. Just in his head. It had all been one big head frak.

And just because Starbuck had been willing, it didn't mean she had any feelings for him, it just meant that even back _then_ she couldn't keep her pants on. Some things never changed. Maybe Zak had done the right thing by dying before she had a chance to show him what she was really like. Or maybe the Adamas just couldn't help themselves. The moment he'd met her he'd stopped thinking straight. Starbuck just made him crazy. And his father – well he'd never been much of a dad until Starbuck came along and suddenly he was the perfect father and she was the daughter he'd never had. Perhaps he should have just had girls, not two sons. Or perhaps it was that _the something_ that was Starbuck just made them _all_ crazy - him, Zak, his father. All crazy in their own different ways. She was never going to be just another pilot, how could she be?

Laura Roslin was watching him, waiting for his answer.

'It's complicated,' was all he said.

'Ok, so let me make it simple. Did Commander Adama dissolve the Presidency because I asked Lieutenant Thrace to go to Caprica and retrieve the arrow?'

He shook his head, trying to clear the tangle of memories and feelings. Where did he start? With Zak? With Starbuck? With the whole frakked up mess? But he could tell by the direction and intensity of her question that Laura Roslin had probably figured out most of the answer already without him needing to go deep into his family history. The explanation she was after was simpler. 'Well, not because you asked her to go. He did it because she went.'

Roslin thought for a moment. 'Because she disobeyed his orders?'

He rubbed his neck, taking a moment to formulate his reply. 'Partly. Like I said, the Raider was a military asset. You crossed a line.' He knew that wasn't going to be enough for her, but Starbuck and Zak – heck, it was personal, and he didn't feel like he wanted to go into all of that right now. He was just about holding it together as it was, without going _there_ again. Besides, their family life was none of her frakking business. Though of course it was, his father had made it her business when he'd put her in here. Her presence in the brig had his father's personal issues stamped all over it. Roslin was here because Starbuck was family, a tiny part of Zak – the only part left alive. It wasn't Laura Roslin's place to send her on a one way mission to anywhere.

'But if I had asked Lieutenant Thrace to go and she had refused…'

He tried to stay with her line of reasoning, editing out the layers of associations with Starbuck, Zak, his father. 'Yeah, he would have been pissed, but I don't think you'd be in here – look, he's the Commander, _he_ tells her what to do, not you. If she had refused then he wouldn't have seen you as such a threat. How in hell you persuaded her to go-'

'I told her he'd lied about Earth,' she said quickly. Her voice was quiet, controlled, but her words hit him with the force of a wrecking ball.

'You _what_?'

'He's lying. He has no idea where Earth is.'

Apollo sat up straighter in the bed. 'Are you serious?'

'Absolutely. He doesn't know if it even exists. He made it up to give the fleet hope. And when I found something more concrete to pin our hopes on he arrested me. _That_ is why it is so important that we retrieve the arrow, so that it can show us the way to Earth. The scriptures are clear that if we take the arrow to Kobol, to the tomb of Athena, it will show us the way. It's our only chance. Does that make sense to you, Captain Apollo?'

Apollo sighed. Between her primitive belief in the truth of the Pythian prophesies and his father's lies, they were all completely frakked. He knew Kara well enough to know that she wasn't a religious nut, she wouldn't have gone to Caprica if she'd felt that there was another way out. Besides, Kara Thrace adored the Old Man. There was no way she would have pulled a stunt like that without a good reason. Suddenly all the pieces began to fall into place. He sat stunned. He couldn't believe his father would lie so blatantly about something so big. There was no Earth? _How in hell? -_ It crossed his mind that perhaps Laura Roslin was the one who was lying. Maybe she was telling him all this to justify sending Starbuck to Caprica. But then why would she do that? Why would she lie about it? He paused for a moment. He hadn't understood what had gotten into Starbuck. She had gone against orders to jump back to Caprica, and she wouldn't have taken it on blind faith, she would have checked it out. She would have asked him. It made sense now. Starbuck had obviously believed Laura Roslin and that was why she had gone. And if Starbuck believed it then chances were she was right.

He glanced over at Roslin. She was watching him intently, waiting patiently for him to think it through. She must have realised the direction of his thoughts because she said quietly, 'Starbuck didn't want to believe it either. But it's true. Your father lied about Earth.'

'So how did _you_ find out?'

'He told me.' She met his gaze, giving him the sincere, direct look that she usually saved for the press. 'I knew that President Adar had no idea where Earth was. I confronted the Commander about it and he acknowledged that he had made it up. He asked me not to say anything – and while that was in the best interests of the fleet, I agreed.'

So all this time his father had been lying about Earth? _Godsdamn_. They had _trusted_ him, followed him through space being picked off by the Cylons, when all the time he'd had no idea of the direction they were headed? How the _frak_ did he think he deserved to command this fleet when he was deceiving them about the one thing that mattered most? He'd said he knew the way. He'd said they were on their way to Earth and a new home. And he, Lee, he'd believed him. He'd trusted him – at least on this one. He should have known better, he should have known after Zak; his father was never going to change. He was still the same arrogant, lying, conceited…

'Captain? Are you alright?'

Apollo shook his head and took a deep breath. 'I'm just… well, getting used to the idea.' He took another deep breath. 'So that's why Starbuck went back to Caprica to find the arrow, because she found out he was lying.'

'I told her because I needed her to see why it was so important. I needed her to see that it was our only hope of finding Earth.'

'Well, I guess there's your answer, Madam President.'

'Right. I see. So this has nothing to do with the Presidency. This is personal.'

He pushed back his rage to focus on her words. 'Yeah. It's personal.'

**00000**

'So how's it going with the prisoner?' Tigh sat down easily on the chair, tipping it back and playing idly with the glass of water on Adama's desk.

Adama glanced up from the paper he was reading. 'He played dumb. Didn't answer any questions. He's either a good actor, crazy, or both.'

'So?' Tigh asked, 'Do we interrogate him properly?'

Adama shook his head with a half-laugh. 'You mean torture him? No. We can't do that. According to Baltar's test he's not a Cylon. For all we know, he might have genuinely lost his mind.'

'You don't believe that.'

Adama sighed. 'No. But it _is_ a possibility.'

'And you don't believe that test-'

'I have my doubts about the test, but at the moment we have no proof he's a Cylon.'

'So how'd a crazy man end up in the CIC?'

'He says he was drugged and someone put him there.'

Tigh grunted, 'Sounds like bullshit to me.'

'He was out for two days. He was drugged. Question is, who did it and is he in on it? Could be he was put there as a distraction. Maybe he _is_ just some crazy guy they dragged out of the fleet.'

Tigh shook his head. 'I don't think so - and you know what I think about Baltar's frakking test. I say we just shove him out the airlock and be done with it.'

'If he _is_ a Cylon then he'll just download and give away our position. Right now we need to find the fleet, not tell the Cylons where we are. And if he's just a diversion, then he's been put there by the real Cylon infiltrator to throw us off the scent. In which case he's human and innocent. We have no evidence either way. And if there is any doubt that he _is_ human, then I'm not executing anyone. '

Adama watched carefully as Tigh frowned at the implications of what he was saying. If execution was on the cards then Apollo still sat first in line. Adama hoped he got it that, given the circumstances, he wasn't going to start airlocking anyone.

'And if he's a human collaborator?'

Adama sighed. 'If he's a human collaborator then he's guilty of treason.' _Which carried the same sentence as mutiny_. How the hell did Apollo get so wrapped up in all this? As far as any Court was concerned, collaborating with the Cylons would be seen in the same light as putting a gun to the XO's head and threatening to shoot him.

Tigh sniffed, frowning. Adama could see he finally realized where this was going. Thankfully he laid off the talk of collaborators and airlocks. 'So what _are_ you going to do with him?'

Adama took a deep breath. 'I'm going to put him in the Brig with Apollo and Roslin.'

'What?' Tigh almost choked out the word.

Adama frowned, fiddling with the paper in front of him. 'It may sound like a crazy idea, but think about it. Starbuck's attempt to interrogate the Leobin model was a screw up. She got nowhere and it just frakked with her mind. Confronting this thing head on isn't going to get us anywhere and we're running out of time. If he _is_ just crazy I'd like to know about it.'

Tigh chuckled, 'So you want to put him in there and find out who's the craziest?'

'No. I want Lee and Roslin to take a look at him. Roslin's smart. I'd be interested to see what she makes of him. And it'll keep her occupied, distract her.'

Tigh grunted again, a hint of amusement twinkling in his eyes, 'You're worried about her being bored?'

'It'll give her something to focus on. I don't want her locked up in that cell with nothing to do but screw with the minds of my crew.' He didn't voice it out loud to Tigh, but the truth was that the only two people on this ship that he would trust to conduct an interview with the prisoner were Lee and the deposed President Laura Roslin - and they were both already in the Brig. As things stood, taking either of them out of there wasn't an option. The neat solution was to put them all in there together. Maybe it was dumb or just some crazy out of the box thinking, but he hadn't come up with a better plan. And they were running out of time.


	8. Home Truths

**Chapter 8**

**Home Truths**

Fourteen Raptor missions and nothing. Nothing. No sign of any of the civilian ships, just a close call when Skulls jumped them into the middle of an asteroid field. Apollo took off his helmet as the Raptor was pulled into the hanger bay, feeling the sweat sliding down his face. He ran his fingers through his hair and laid his head back on the pilot seat.

He'd had the whole of his duty shift to think about what Laura Roslin had told him. At first he'd been nothing but mad, wanting to turn the Raptor right around and go straight up to his Dad's quarters and yell at him, but once he'd had some time to calm down he'd realized that yelling at his father wouldn't make any difference; it wouldn't get Starbuck back and it certainly wouldn't find them the fleet. By the end of his shift he'd had a chance to smooth over his rage with something that at least resembled rational thought. He understood why his father had done it, why he'd told everyone in the fleet he had a plan - the fleet had desperately needed something to hang onto – but he still thought that saying he knew the location of Earth was nothing short of cynical manipulation. His father could as easily have said that they would go find a habitable planet and settle there, but oh no, his father had to be the hero, had to be the one to find _Earth._ Even though he knew his father didn't believe in the prophesies, he had still played the religious card, counting on the fact that it would press the right buttons and ignite just the right sentiments by even the mention of the word. _Earth_ was the mythical fulfillment of the prophesies and William Adama had to set himself up as the person to get everyone there.

Somehow seeing it all this clearly wasn't helping. He sighed, catching sight of Colonel Tigh waiting for him in the hanger bay. Apollo opened the hatch, letting Skulls scurry out first before he followed more slowly. His eye glanced down to the piece of paper Tigh was holding in front of him. More orders. His father had taken to sending Colonel Tigh with written instructions for him, clearly unwilling to give him any orders to his face. He hadn't seen his father since that day he'd put the handcuffs on him in the CIC before they lost the fleet. Three days.

He tucked his helmet under his arm, stepping off the Raptor's platform and saluting the Colonel. He had it to hand to him, Tigh may have been a drunk bastard, but he hadn't treated Apollo any differently since he'd pointed that gun at his head.

'Captain. Your orders,' Tigh handed him the piece of paper, lifting his eyebrows with a hint of amusement. Apollo took the paper from him, saluting again as Tigh turned and gave a half wave-half salute as he nonchalantly wandered off. He looked down and frowned, quickly scanning the page. _Great_. A cozy chat with the Old Man.

'Captain?' Chief Tyrol was standing in front of him, his head bowed slightly. The Chief looked wrecked. He hadn't seen him since they'd gotten him off Kobol, but he hadn't shaved and he didn't look like he'd slept either. His head was still bandaged up where that bullet had grazed him. 'Um, I just wanted to ask, sir, if there's any news of Boomer and Racetrack?'

Apollo sighed, running his hands through his hair. Hadn't anyone told him? Yeah, they probably had, but he could understand why the chief needed to hear it from him. He hesitated, not wanting to crush the last piece of hope that Chief Tyrol was hanging on to - but nothing he could say was going to change the truth or make it any easier to hear. He was better off just giving it to him straight. 'I'm sorry Chief, there's no more news. It looks like they got caught in the blast of the Base Star.'

The Chief bit his lip. 'Ok, thanks, thanks Captain. I know you went back for another pass and I thought- well-'

Apollo paused for a moment, then shook his head. 'I'm sorry. Look, if there's any more news, you'll be the first to know, OK?'

'Yeah. Well, thanks,' the Chief bit his lip again, nodding. 'Any sign of Starbuck?'

Apollo felt his breath hitch. He sighed. 'No.' They were both silent for a moment, the Chief staring into the distance with a pained expression. He took a deep, shuddering breath. 'I just thought- yeah, well. Thanks Captain.'

Apollo nodded. He didn't know what to say. He patted the Chief on the shoulder, feeling like a jerk, but there was nothing he could say or do. He hadn't known the Chief that long, only a couple of months, but the guy's feelings for Boomer were no secret and any fool could see it was hitting him hard. 'Look, take it easy, Chief,' he said quietly, hoping it was enough.

'Yeah, you too Captain.' Apollo watched him go. He guessed that the Chief and Boomer hadn't had a chance to say goodbye. Not many of them had. He stood for a while, feeling the emptiness crawl into his belly like a black hole.

**00000**

Apollo paused outside the Commander's door while the guard stood stiffly to attention. He took a deep breath and knocked loudly on the hatch.

'Come in!' His father looked up from behind his desk.

'Captain.'

'Commander.' Apollo stood stiffly to attention.

There was a tense silence as his father watched him quietly, clearly trying to evaluate his state of mind. Apollo stood front of him, feeling his irritation growing. Was his father waiting for him to cave, say he was sorry, be all regretful about what he had done? Oh yeah, right, he was supposed to have had time to 'think about what he'd done' while he was in the brig. Like some teenager grounded for getting home too late from a party. He couldn't believe how it was the same desk his father had sat behind when he was a kid. There were all the familiar items, the model ship on the sideboard, the pen, the smell of musty books, there was even a family photo of all three of them: a younger version of his father standing in front of a Viper in his pilot uniform with him and Zak, both boys grinning like idiots. How could his father bear to look at that photograph day after day, knowing what had happened, knowing how Zak had died? And how dare he flaunt that picture in front of _him_? Zak was his brother. That was _his_ life, _his_ childhood. He had no right. He felt the familiar rage boiling up inside of him.

His gaze was pulled away from the photograph as his father started speaking. 'As you know, a man appeared in the CIC when we jumped away from the fleet. Baltar has run a test on him and it's negative - looks like he's human – and no sign of any known poisons, though from his blood analysis it looks like he's a drunk. I've ordered him to be put in the Brig with you and Laura Roslin. I'd like you both to evaluate him. We need to know if he's just crazy or some kind of Cylon informer.'

Apollo squinted and pulled back in surprise. 'This is a joke, right? You're putting this prisoner in the brig, so we can both _evaluate_ him?'

Adama shifted uncomfortably in his chair, but he held Apollo's gaze steadily. 'That's right', he said without emotion.

Apollo shook his head. 'No. No, I'm sorry, but you can't do this. You can't have it both ways. You can't lock the President in the Brig one moment and then expect her to work for you the next. It's either one thing or the other – either she's a prisoner or she isn't.'

'Those are your orders Captain.' Adama's eyes were cold now.

Apollo shook his head, 'No. You can't _frakking_ do this.' He saw his father wince.

'Don't make this worse than it already is, son.' Adama was watching him carefully, playing it cool. The cool authoritarian. That crap wasn't going to wash this time. Apollo looked at him with disgust.

'You think you can do whatever the frak you want, don't you? – change the rules; _break_ the frakking rules to get what you want. Well it doesn't work that way. You can't just lie and cheat your way out of everything.'

He saw his father sit back in his chair, shock and hurt registering in his eyes.

'She went because you frakking lied, dad,' he heard his own voice breaking, choking up with emotion. He took a deep breath, calming himself down, 'And you killed Boomer and Racetrack as well. And now you're too godsdamn proud to admit that you were wrong and say you're sorry.'

Adama looked down at his desk, letting out a deep, shuddering breath before he met Apollo's gaze once more. 'What's this about?'

Apollo's eyes opened wide in surprise. 'You know what this is about. You lied. _That's_ what this is about. You _frakking_ lying about Earth.'

Adama looked startled, but then composed himself, a look of contempt crossing his face. 'You've been talking to Laura Roslin.'

'Yes. Yes - in case you hadn't noticed, the President and I are sharing the same cells. And it's the truth, isn't it? Isn't it, dad?'

Adama looked him square in the eyes, 'Moral was low. They needed something to believe in. I gave them hope.'

Apollo hissed. 'You gave them a _lie_. And what, you thought you'd get away with it? That no one would find out because Laura Roslin would keep your little secret – and when she didn't, when she told Starbuck, you were so mad you had her arrested and put in the Brig.' He was almost shouting now, pointing his finger at his father to emphasize every word.

Adama's voice went up a notch in response. 'I put Laura Roslin in the Brig because her religious ideas were becoming a danger to this ship and to the fleet.'

'I can't see how her ideas are any more dangerous than your lies.'

Adama stood up suddenly and leant menacingly over the desk, glaring over towards Apollo, his voice harsh and cold, 'The Raider was a military asset, which she sent on some damn fool mission-'

'Oh come on, dad, it isn't about the Raider, it isn't even about Starbuck. It's about you. _You_ lied and _you_ got found out.'

They both stood glaring at each other, the desk between them, the cute smiling faces of their past selves mocking the rage they were flinging at each other. Adama paused and Apollo could see him trying to compose himself. When he spoke again his voice was softer, with an edge of tiredness to it that Apollo hadn't registered before.

'What I did, I did for the good of the fleet.'

Apollo snorted. He wasn't buying it. His father was so smug he'd justify anything. No. He wasn't going to get away with that one. 'And Laura Roslin believes that what _she_ did was for the good of the fleet.'

'At least _I_ know the difference between truth and fiction.'

'Oh, so she _believes_ in her religious ideas? Good! I'm glad someone believes in something around here, because I can't see how _that_ is any worse than your lie. She's innocent, but _you_ lied and then _you_ committed treason to cover it up!'

Something inside Adama snapped shut. 'That will be all Captain.'

Apollo saluted. 'Commander.' The words came out more sarcastic than he'd intended. He turned smartly on his heel and left the room.

So much for calmly and rationally arguing his point. But then his father had always gotten him so angry he didn't know where to put himself. All he wanted now was to go to the gym, beat the crap out of a punch bag, but instead he had to report to the Brig and stand on his best behaviour with President Roslin

He debated whether to go straight back to the Brig, but he couldn't. He wasn't ready to go there and face Laura Roslin's intense scrutiny. It was all a frakking mess. The two of them were as crazy as each other – his father with his lies and her with her religious crap. If he'd had any idea of what was really going on he'd have stayed away from both of them.

He could see now how the whole conversation that morning had been orchestrated by her. She'd played him. She knew fine well why his father had put her in the brig. She'd known better than he had. The only point in asking him had been to get him on her side, to slide more of a wedge between him and his father. And she'd succeeded in that. Full colors. But it didn't mean he agreed with her. She was smart and canny and on some crazy religious trip that wasn't exactly doing any of them any favors either. At least his father had logic on his side. And yeah, he'd told his father that he preferred her faith, but he'd been mad and the truth was, well, her blind faith scared him. At least his father was using reason even if he didn't agree with it. She had nothing but myths and legends to back her up, and religious hysteria was no way to run the fleet.

He didn't like to admit it, but maybe his father had been right after all – not about taking down the presidency, not about that, nothing justified that - but his suspicions of her religious fervor made sense. But then his father had lied. If he'd been straight about Earth then Starbuck would have had no reason not to trust him. He couldn't blame the President for that, he brought that one on himself.

Apollo remembered the time his father had first mentioned Earth. The hanger bay had been strewn with dead bodies; the despair they were all feeling had been palpable. And then his father had turned it all around. He'd given the speech of a lifetime, lifting them all and giving them hope. Maybe it had been misguided, but Apollo remembered how bad it had all looked, and then – how his father had turned their despair into hope. Maybe he should have said something less dramatic, talked about finding some habitable planet. But that wouldn't have had the same impact. Saying he knew where Earth was and that they were going there had been the turning point. His father was right. It _had_ given them hope. It had probably kept them alive. Could he really blame him for that?

Apollo sighed. Why was he so godsdamn rational? He wanted to be angry with him. Angry about Zak, about Starbuck, about the whole frakking mess. Hell, he even wanted to blame him for the Cylon attack. He wanted it all to be his father's fault. But it wasn't, he saw that now. Maybe none of it was. Not even Zak. He took a deep ragged breath. Kara had let Zak fly that viper, not his father. And Earth? Maybe that was the lie that had saved them all so far. And even Laura Roslin – yeah, she _was_ turning into a religious nut. But none of that justified taking down the presidency. His father was wrong on that one.

He winced when he remembered their conversation. He'd even blamed his father for killing Boomer and Racetrack. He re-ran the hurt expression on his father's face. _Frak_, that man always made him crazy with rage. What the frak had he been thinking - and what did it all matter anyway? Why the hell were they arguing about the presidency and the hope of Earth when it was already all gone? The fleet was gone. They had no hope of finding any of them. And without the fleet they had no fuel, no supplies. They were as dependent on the fleet as the fleet was on Galactica. So why were they even having the conversation? Whether Laura Roslin was in or out of the Brig was irrelevant now.

He wandered up to the corridor where all the dead and missing were remembered, their photos and mementos stuck on the walls, taking in all of the faces looking out at him. He didn't want to think how long before he would be putting Starbuck's photograph up there too. Hopefully they'd _all_ be gone before then, with no one left to remember anyone. He stood for a moment, the lump in his throat making it hard to breathe. He knew he'd never see her again. There'd been a time when he'd thought they could get along, make something good together – in spite of Zak, in spite of the fact that she worshipped the Old Man, in spite of Gaius Baltar – _frak_, was his memory of Kara always going to be linked to the last person she frakked? Not that it mattered now anyway. Kara's feelings for any of them were irrelevant. She was dead, and that was that. He turned quietly, making his way slowly to the Brig to spend more time being manipulated by the deposed President of the Colonies.


	9. Paradigm Shift

**Chapter 9**

**Paradigm Shift**

It had taken Apollo over an hour to get from his father's quarters to the Brig. He knew that Colonel Tigh would have his ass if he was found out, but he needed the time to get his head in the game before he faced Laura Roslin again. Losing it with his father was bad enough; he had to play smart with her. Their priority at the moment was to find the fleet, and having long conversations with Laura Roslin wasn't helping. By the time he found himself on the corridor to the Brig, he had already decided that he wouldn't listen to her anymore; she wasn't going to get under his skin and play him like a puppet, he would politely counter her moves and focus on being the CAG. From now on he would stay the hell out of politics.

He pushed aside the small voice that told him he was playing right into his father's hands now. He had wondered why the Old Man had made him share cells with the President, well, now he knew. And yeah, his father had been right. Now he was frakked off with both of them.

The two armed guards stiffened when they saw him, but then saluted, opening the hatch door for him to step inside. He smiled. The irony wasn't lost on him. He was still the CAG and he outranked them, but he was also their prisoner. Not that it meant a whole lot - he could pretty much come and go as he chose. Being the CAG kept him busy and all he needed to do was ask the guards to let him out and they would. OK, so he understood that his father was trying to make a point – and he was aware that the rest of the crew knew he was in here - but he was quite sure they didn't realize how lame it all was.

He hesitated as he stepped through the heavy hatch door, noticing immediately that there was another prisoner occupying the third cell. He was between the two of them, the new prisoner on one side and the President on the other. The guy had a beard and shaggy, unkempt hair. He was sitting quietly on the cot in his cell, but when he saw Apollo he stood up and nodded over to Laura Roslin. 'I think the lady's in trouble.'

Apollo looked questioningly at him then glanced over to Laura Roslin. She was sitting on her bed rocking up and down, clutching her book of scripture and babbling incoherently.

He felt a jolt of panic when he saw her. Was she sick? In pain?

'Madam President? Madam President?' There was no response, she just kept rocking. She was muttering and grimacing as if she were having a conversation with someone. Her eyes were staring wide and she was shivering.

'Madam President, are you OK?' he was talking louder now, holding onto the bars that separated their two cells. She seemed completely oblivious to him, her eyes focusing somewhere in the middle distance, almost like she was in some sort of trance. He glanced quickly over to the guard. He was sitting at his station watching them with a neutral, disinterested expression.

'How long has she been like this?' he snapped.

'I don't know sir, I just came on duty.'

Apollo called louder, 'Madam President, can you hear me?' There was still no response.

He turned back to the guard. 'Where's Doc Cottle?'

'I'm sorry sir, Doc Cottle's not on board. He was on the Rising Star when we lost the fleet….'

'Madam President? Are you okay?'

'I don't think she can hear you brother,' the new prisoner was watching intently. 'I've been here awhile now and she's been like that since I got here.'

Apollo paused, then turned quickly to the guard, 'Get my father. She needs help.'

The guard shook his head, 'I'm sorry, sir, my orders are to…'

'_Frak_ your orders, Corporal! She's sick. Go get my father!' The man paused, biting his lip, then nodded, slipping out of the Brig and leaving the prisoners alone in their cells.

Roslin looked up suddenly. 'Captain Apollo!' she smiled sweetly at him. 'How are you, Captain?'

'Madam President, are you OK?' He held the bars that divided their two cells, getting as close to her as he could.

'OK? I'm…no, I'm not OK. I'm…I need some medicine, Captain. I need you to go to Doc Cottle and get me some medicine. I think I'm suffering some withdrawal from the medication, and I need you to go to… Oh, look, OH!' she looked down at the book in her hands. 'Spiders!' she cried, brushing the dusty cover, 'Spiders on the scriptures. No, No.' she turned around, crawling on her bed, 'No, no, spiders on the scriptures, because there will be salvation, there _will_ be. But not with spiders, it won't happen. I have to do something. Oh no, oh my Gods, look at them, they're everywhere! There'll be salvation for all, there will be, the Lords of Kobol saw the anointed one from afar, they did, they did, the lights of the heavens illuminating their throne. Oh my Gods, they're everywhere. What do I do? I can't, I can't. Oh Gods, _let_ them come from the East and the West, the lower demons shall not find them….'

A wave of panic swept over him as he watched her crawling on the bed, swatting imaginary spiders and throwing verses of scripture at them like confetti. What was going on? Was she sick? She said she was suffering withdrawal from something, but what sort of drug did this?

The door opened suddenly and his father walked in, striding swiftly toward the bars, 'Open the cell.' His voice was gruff and full of emotion. Apollo watched silently as the guard slid back the door and his father went inside and bent down beside her.

'Laura.' He touched her arm gently. She leapt back, startled, still on all fours. She looked at him sideways, quizzically trying to work out who this person was.

'Commander Adama? Is it you? It _is_ you! Look, there are spiders; everywhere. I can't stop them, I can't make them go, they're all over, please, please help me. Maybe we could remove them together?' she gave him a look so simple, so trusting. He could see the uncertainty on his father's face.

'Laura, what's happening?'

'I need your help, Bill. I need you to help me with this; I can't do it on my own. I can't, look, they're too much, it's too much.' She started sobbing and shaking.

He sat down on the bed and she crawled closer as he put his arms around her. 'Laura, I need to know what is happening. Are you sick?'

'Yes, I'm sick, Bill. I'm not just sick, I'm dying. Did I tell you?' she gave a little laugh.

'Dad, she told me she needs medication - that Doc Cottle was giving her something.'

His father looked down at her, 'Laura, what was the medication that Doc Cottle was giving you? What was it called?'

'What? What? Oh, he was giving me Chamalla. Chamalla. Sounds nice, doesn't it. Like Caramella. Chamalla.'

Chamalla? Wasn't that some sort of narcotic? His father sighed and stood up. He turned to the guard. 'This doesn't go outside this room. You understand?'

The guard nodded. 'Yes sir.'

'Apollo, go find us some Chamalla.'

'What?'

'You heard me.'

**00000**

Desmond had been surprised when they moved him. He'd half hoped that they were going to let him go, but when they put the handcuffs on him and he found himself surrounded by six heavily armed guards, he'd realised that release probably wasn't on the cards. He was still weak and so unsteady on his feet that two of the guards had to practically drag him along.

They'd pushed him into this new cell and then shut the door, leaving him floundering on the floor, pulling himself up awkwardly to sit on the bed. This cell was smaller than the last one with just a bed to one side and a small washroom over in one corner. There were three cells - he was on one end, the middle one was empty, and a woman was sitting on the bed in the third.

It hadn't taken him long to realize that there was something wrong with the woman in the far cell. She was mumbling, clutching a book to her chest and rocking on the bed. There was something about her that he found disturbing - maybe it was because he was too close to the edge himself, or simply that the sight of her made him think how she didn't belong in a prison cell. He wondered why they had her locked up in here – she didn't look dangerous and there must have been a lot of other places they could have put her. These people were really beginning to scare him.

He didn't know how long he sat there looking over at her and wondering what the hell was going to happen next. He tried to listen to what she was saying, but she was muttering too quietly and the little snippets he could hear hadn't made any sense to him. In the end he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, trying to let it all wash over him. Eventually he heard the heavy hatch door swing open and glanced up as a younger guy strode in. He was dressed in military fatigues with a close cropped military haircut.

The guard saluted the new man and then let him into the cell between them. That was when it stopped making any sense at all. The next few minutes were a blur. Desmond desperately tried to follow what was going on; the young officer was a Captain. Captain Apollo. And he'd called the woman in the far cell Madam President. Then Captain Apollo demanded that the guard get his father – he'd asked for a doctor so Desmond assumed his father was some sort of medic. Then the man who'd questioned him before showed up. Madam President called _him_ Commander Adama and he called her Laura. Names, names, names. None of them making any sense at all.

Then they'd left, taking Crazy Laura with them.

He sat on the bed for a while after they'd gone, trying to sort out the jumble of what he had seen and heard. Through the whole scene none of them had paid him any attention. He had been completely ignored. They obviously hadn't expected Laura to go mad, and though he hadn't been able to catch all of it, he had heard them talking about drugs and withdrawal. Had she been drugged too? He sat in the dark for a long time before finally lying down and trying to sleep.

He was woken by the sound of screeching metal, blinking in the dim light as he saw Captain Apollo being returned to the cell next to him, walking slowly to the small bed and lying down heavily, not even bothering to take off his boots. He looked exhausted. There was more scraping of metal as the cell door shut and was locked behind him. The lights had been dimmed just after they'd all gone - after the woman called Laura had lost her mind and been taken away. It must be the middle of the night now as he'd been asleep for a good few hours.

'Is she OK? Laura?' his voice echoed too loud. He sensed the guard's eyes on him.

The other man moved slightly, Desmond could just make out his shape in the dim light.

'She's in sickbay,' the voice that came back to him was bone weary. 'My father's with her.'

Desmond paused. 'Your father? He's the Commander? The guy that was in here with Laura?'

He heard the other man give a sort of choking laugh, 'Oh yes, he's my father alright. And _she's_ the President - and we're all frakked.'

Desmond was silent for a moment. 'If you're his son, then why are you here?'

The other man didn't say anything.

'You're Captain Apollo? That's what Laura called you?' He paused. 'I'm Desmond.'

'Yeah. I know who you are. And you know what? I don't care. I'm done. I'm going to get some sleep.'

Desmond could feel the moment slipping away from him. 'Listen brother, if you already know who I am, then can you tell me why they put me in here?'

There was a pause, then a sigh before the other man spoke up, his voice flat and defeated, 'My Father thinks you planted that virus in the Nav Computer.'

'What, like a computer virus?'

'Yeah, just like that. But you know what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't make any difference now whether you did it or not. It worked. The fleet's gone. We're screwed. Now. I've got a long day tomorrow and I'm going to get some sleep.'

Apollo turned away from him and wrapped himself in the blanket, leaving Desmond sitting quietly in the dark. So they thought he had planted some computer virus? How could he explain to them that he hadn't? He couldn't even tell them how he got here in the first place. Besides, for all he knew their computer malfunction _had been_ caused by what they'd done in the Hatch. Maybe it was when Locke had smashed the computer, or when he'd turned the fail-safe key – it was quite possible that it had affected all the computers here. For all he knew, it _could_ have been him.

That plane had crashed when he'd let the numbers run down below zero, who knew what had happened when he'd turned that key? These Dharma stations were probably all linked. But then the Commander had said that they were on a ship. And what was the fleet? He didn't get it. He needed more information and nobody seemed willing to tell him anything.

He stared at the sleeping form in the cell next to him, wondering if he should wake him up to try and get some answers, but he sensed that Captain Apollo wasn't going to tell him anything. There was nothing he could do but sit and wait and watch and hope the pieces began to fit together soon.

This cell wasn't that far away from the other one, but he'd seen enough on the way to show him that this place was huge. It certainly looked like another hatch - the heavy doors, the bleak corridors – he couldn't see what else it could be. This hatch was different from the one he'd lived in, but there were enough similarities to convince him that he was dealing with the same operation. The guy who had questioned him had said this was a ship, so maybe this was a Dharma ship. Unless of course he was lying. For all he knew he was still on the Island stuck in another hatch.

It didn't make any sense - but then what if it wasn't supposed to? What if John Locke had been right after all? What if all these Dharma stations _were_ just elaborate laboratories designed to test how far they could push the human mind? It certainly looked like Laura's had been pushed too far.

He had been in that hatch for three years, pressing that damn button every one hundred and eight minutes – and all that time he'd had the same sense of unreality he was getting here, now, some awful sense of déjà vu.

And why _had it_ been every one hundred and eight minutes?

Why not a round number like one hundred?

He'd often asked himself that question, but now that he was away from the old hatch the contradictions were staring him in the face. Kelvin had told them they had to press the button to release a build up of electromagnetic energy, that there'd been an 'incident' so now a charge built up that had to be released. And if it wasn't then the world would end. Neither he nor Kelvin had completely believed it, but they'd been convinced enough to stay there pushing that damn button when the alarm told them to. But now it seemed such an obvious hoax - there was no way the wellbeing of the known world would have been left to the whims of two fallible human beings. That was just stupid. If that job was so important it wouldn't have been left to some random guys in a hatch in the middle of the jungle to get up every one hundred and eight minutes to sort it all out? It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

Locke had said he'd found another hatch on the Island – one with a viewing room with screens and notebooks - he'd said that the old hatch was under constant surveillance. He thought the whole thing had been made up as part of some elaborate experiment.

But then what about the plane? That had been real enough, it had looked as if the numbers going down to zero _had_ crashed that plane - he'd seen it written on that printout. Unless of course the printout was a fake. There was no reason why that too couldn't have been part of the experiment. The more he thought about it the more he saw that John Locke's reasoning made sense – what if all of this really was some huge experiment, and he was nothing more than a little guinea pig running round and round trying to make sense of a reality that someone else had created.

That would mean that Kelvin had died for nothing.

And that they had probably watched it happen. They had probably been waiting to see which one of them would crack first.

He shivered as the moment of clarity hit him. He'd been such a fool. He'd allowed himself to be imprisoned in that hatch for three years and now he'd let himself be moved here - from one sick experiment to another.

This wasn't going to end well.

There was no way they were going to let him go.

He felt the dread pushing down on him. But then he remembered the way the hatch shook, the way the stuff kept flying around, the way his bloody fillings hurt when he walked near that wall. All that had been real. _That_ had been electromagnetism in action. It hadn't been a fake.

Apart from anything else, why would anyone be that interested in what he did? – he wasn't that important, and no experiment he could think of deserved that much time and effort. They could get the same information by watching volunteers in a shopping center. As experiments go, it didn't seem worth it. And when he looked at this place – hell, it was a military base, or a ship or whatever. He'd been in the army long enough to recognize that these were real guns and real guards and he was in a real cell. What if all of it was just what it looked like and the computer in the Hatch _had_ done something? What if the failsafe in the Hatch really _had_ messed up the system here?

But then that didn't explain how he got here – who had drugged him and why they had put him here.

_Hell_. He'd gone full circle again. Round and round. Nothing making sense for long.

He glanced over at Captain Apollo's sleeping form. When he woke up he'd get some answers.


	10. Rip Tide

**Chapter 10**

**Rip Tide**

**1996 Oxford, England**

Eloise Hawking sat in her hotel room drumming her fingers impatiently on the page. She was staring at the meaningless symbols in front of her, but her mind was with her son. Dinner hadn't gone as well as she had hoped. She had wanted Daniel to be as enthusiastic about her plan as she was, but he'd received it all with a weary – and she didn't like to admit it, but yes, bored – sort of a yawn, flicking through her calculations as if they were childish scribbles in crayon. He was becoming more and more insufferable about his superior intelligence. She knew it was partly because he was simply growing into his role, but even so, his petulance irked her.

She sighed. She'd planted seeds, that was all. But she knew he would do it. She knew that once he got back to his room he would go through her calculations properly and then he would conduct the experiment. She gave a half smile as she imagined the expression on his face when he corrected the intentional error she'd put there - it was a little game they had, each sharing the other's work and carefully masking the deliberate mistake for the other to find. It was probably the only fun they had. He resented her and she knew it.

She _had_ hoped to have been there and watched the experiment itself, but she could tell by his almost curt dismissal of her that he wasn't even going to look over the paper until he was alone. So after dinner she had reluctantly hailed a taxi to take her back to the hotel, resolving to return in the morning to see whether or not he had actually carried out the test. Of course she would be monitoring it herself; she'd probably be awake half the night desperately checking to see if it had worked. And that meant visiting that memory over and over again. Not something she particularly relished, but it was the only way she had of telling whether or not anything had changed.

She gently touched the cover of the black notebook she held in her hands. She had a photocopy of every page stored securely in a safe deposit box, but _this_ was the real thing, the original, the last thing she had to remember him by. Stupid really, as she'd just had dinner with him, but somehow in her mind she'd separated the two versions of him; this one _now_ that she remembered giving birth to, and _that_ one, who she'd watched…She shuddered and pushed the memory away.

Not yet.

She'd have the whole night to play that game. Playing chase with that dreadful scene. She mentally pulled herself together and opened the book again, pulling out the pages of notes that she'd made, checking them over and over to make sure she hadn't made a mistake. No, it was all correct – well, as correct as she could make it. And if it wasn't, well, she was sure that Daniel would be very pleased to tell her so in the morning.

00000

Faraday walked quietly back from the restaurant. He wondered whether she found these dinners as distasteful as he did. Probably not. She was his mother and that is what mothers did. He wasn't the only young lecturer to have a pushy mother, though none of his colleagues were unfortunate enough to have a mother who was also a temporal physicist. Not only was she too interested in the minutiae of his life, but she also had every fang and claw stuck into his work as well.

No, that wasn't fair. She meant well. At least he hoped she did.

Dinner had been strained. She had insisted on interrogating him with her usual ridiculously detailed questions about his life - and then had surpassed herself by producing the paper; a piece of research that shamelessly piggybacked on his latest breakthroughs. Heck, they weren't even published yet. She'd slapped the papers down on the table and told him to have a look at them because he _might_ find them interesting. She'd said it with the sort of smile that implied she thought she was onto something.

Maybe it was good for him to be egged on by his mother, maybe not - but either way it bugged the hell out of him. When he had gotten this lectureship in Oxford his first thought had been how good it would be to have a whole ocean between them. Most of the time he put off answering phone calls and emails, but sadly, when she was in the UK, the mandatory dinner was something that he just had to suffer his way through.

He paused at the College entrance; bed now, or his lab? Hell, he wouldn't sleep anyway, she'd wound him up too tight. He wasn't going to get any real work done, not after half a bottle of wine. The alcohol may have dulled the edge off their meal together, but it wasn't exactly conducive to study. Maybe if he pottered around his lab a bit it might at least calm him down.

The stillness of his office was a relief. Whenever he was with his mother he felt like he was bracing himself against a strong wind. His jaw was clenched so tight his teeth hurt. With a slow, even sigh, he put his bag down, switched on the kettle and pulled out the student papers he was supposed to mark. His mother's lay on the top of the pile. Even a quick glance at it showed at least two important errors. The first was the usual intentional mistake, part of the little test she liked to set him. The other was a ridiculously elementary slip, one that showed a basic lack of understanding that was common in her work. It was almost as if she started off with a formula, some great spark of an idea, and then had to work back from it, fudging all the way.

He flicked to the end of the document, glancing down to the final paragraph where, in her own handwriting, she'd scribbled at the bottom, '_Try these settings_, ' ringed in red, followed by a series of numbers. Her paper was all about whether a focused deep wave could lock onto a matching signal and form a sort of tunnel through the fabric of space-time. She was suggesting that it would be possible to create a sort of viewing window or porthole into other worlds. It was an ambitious idea – especially as even the concept of a deep wave was something he'd only been toying with in theory. He hadn't even broached its possibility with the wider academic community – beyond being mocked openly by the few colleagues he had been dumb enough to talk to about it.

She was teasing him, right?

He shoved a tea bag in his mug, filled it up with water and splashed it around hurriedly, leaving the bag on the spoon. He never had any milk in this place because he never remembered to buy any. Instead, he spooned in six teaspoons of sugar to mask the bitter taste, sat back in the comfy chair with his mother's paper in front of him and started reading it more closely.

As usual, the formulas were inspired but the workings were a mess. He made three or four quick corrections straight away, lining up the numbers so at least they made some coherent sense of the final solution. Where did his mother get this stuff from? He was becoming increasingly convinced that she had to be plagiarizing someone else's work because it was obvious that she had no understanding of the concepts she was dealing with. He had no clue how she got away with it. He saw through it every time - but she was his mother, what was he going to do, tell on her? Tell who? Unless she had some lab rat locked up in a cupboard somewhere, there was no proof that she was getting this from anyone else. Maybe she was doing drugs and she just dreamt the formulas. Well, there was nothing illegal about that – except the drugs, of course.

He went through her workings twice more, making one final correction and then he watched in surprise as the whole thing cascaded into place. OK, _now_ he was interested. He shifted over to the computer, typing in the parameters she had outlined and waiting impatiently for the computer to start on the complex calculations and create the simulation. It looked like that was going to take at least two or three hours. Time enough to get down to those wretched papers. He grabbed his red pen and pulled the students' work off the desk, making himself another cup of tea before he got down to work.

He must have dozed off. The wine and the sheer boredom of having to look at the trite and error-strewn papers of his students had sent him off to sleep. It was 2 am now. He scooted over to the computer and clicked off the screen saver. What emerged from the screen astounded him. Instead of the usual random points representing nothing more than white noise, he saw image of a beautiful, coherent deep wave. He grabbed the sheets of paper his mother had given him and turned to the final page, typing in the numbers she had circled in red. He watched, fascinated, as the wave slowly smoothed out, striking out into the empty space of the screen like an arrow.

So the simulation worked. He grunted in approval – and yeah, he had to admit he was surprised. In spite of her crass mistakes, his mother's ideas were usually inspired, and - though he'd never tell _her_ - a step ahead of his own; but before this she hadn't produced anything with this level of practical application.

So. Now from theory to practice. _Now_ he had to try and generate the wave for real. His wave generator was something he had rigged up from one of those full body x-ray machines they had at airport security. It was the standing joke among his fellow researchers - the wave emitter made out of old junk that produced waves that no one could see or measure. The mocking attitude of his peers was the reason he had declined to use the lab space available to him and why he preferred to conduct his experiments here in his office. It had created a few raised eyebrows and questions about health and safety but, as he had pointed out, he was attempting to produce a wave form that none of them even believed existed so how could that possibly be construed as a health risk?

He switched on the airport gates and tapped in the first set of numbers he'd calculated from his mother's initial formula. He waited while the generator built the wave, slowly increasing its intensity to make sure it was stable. There was no way to tell if anything was actually happening – sure the computer told him he was generating a deep wave as if it were actually there, but that didn't tell him much, since he'd written the program that made it do that. The truth was that he hadn't yet found a way to measure whether or not the image on the screen translated into any tangible reality at all. It was very frustrating. At this level science turned into nothing short of wishful thinking and a sort of dogged belief that would make a clergyman proud. Hence the mocking voices of his colleagues. They delighted in pointing out how they were involved in _real_ science compared to his fixation on invisible wave forms that only existed in his imagination. As far as they were concerned, if he couldn't measure them then it wasn't science. Sadly, his mother was about the only person who took his work seriously.

He shook his head, pushing away thoughts of his mother and everyone else and concentrating instead on the image of the wave emerging from the screen in front of him. It was looking good. Once the low level wave appeared to be steady he increased the amplitude. In theory he was now generating the wave between the two airport security gates that were straddled each side of the space in front of him. They were propped up in the corner of his room, untidily screwed into the floor. He typed in the numbers his mother had ringed in red and then watched as a second wave appeared. Where the hell did that one come from? That wasn't in the simulation. He watched curiously the new wave meshed and melded with the first. He increased the pulse, strengthening the signal so that he could get a better look at it. It was still relatively weak, but even now he was sure he could see indistinct forms coalescing into some sort of a pattern on the screen, tiny pinpricks the computer had calculated along with a number identifying its position in space relative to the combined wave.

He peered carefully through the airport security gates. They looked exactly the same as they had fifteen minutes ago before he built the wave. No sign that they were doing anything except sitting there looking like some trendy exhibit in a modern art gallery. On impulse he picked up his old leather satchel and threw it between the gates, expecting to see it land with a thump in the corner of the room. He gasped in shock as it simply disappeared.

It _disappeared_.

No way.

He squinted suspiciously at the space where the satchel should have been, and then picked up a pencil and threw that after the satchel. It disappeared too. He looked back at the screen, drinking in the numbers and the tiny pinpricks of light, noting their position relative to the constant of where he stood now. He stared at the security gates with a puzzled frown. OK, so his methodology hadn't exactly been _scientific_, and now he had to get his satchel back, but- he paused, and then eased around the computer desk before stepping cautiously into the wave.

He must have blacked out because the next thing he knew he was crouched down in what looked like a small cupboard - complete with clothes hanging above his head and shoes underneath him. He shifted uncomfortably, pulling one of the shoes out carefully from behind his ankle. Apart from the noises he was making there was no sound. He let out the breath he'd been holding and stuck his head around the cupboard door.

He was in a room. Not _his_ room. Another room. He scrambled out of the cupboard and stood up, holding the back of his head with both hands and slowly turning around, taking it all in with an expression of rapt astonishment. 'I don't believe it,' he said quietly to himself, '_This_ is incredible.'

He stood for a moment, just letting the reality of it sink in. How had his mother pulled this one off? He looked around a little more carefully. The room was fairly small, obviously an office of some sort with a large wooden desk and several bookshelves along the walls. On one of the sideboards was a model sailing ship, its tiny pieces meticulously glued into place. He scanned the rest of the room quickly; a washbasin, a huge door with a wheel in the middle – it looked like the sort of watertight door you'd get on a ship. That figured.

He got out his notebook and scrambled through the pages. Yes, a ship, that would make sense; a kind of weird theoretical sense. _Not_ the sort of sense he would have imagined to have translated into any sort of tangible reality, but it made logical sense anyway. So at least something was holding together in all of this.

He blinked hard as the pages blurred in front of him. Better sit down. He plopped into the chair behind the desk and took a deep breath, willing the world to stay still long enough for him to get his bearings. There was a glass of water lying on the desk and he took a quick swig, telling himself he was sure that whoever owned the room wouldn't begrudge him that.

Once he was feeling a little more alert he leafed through the papers on the desk, trying to find any clues about where exactly he had ended up. The headed notepaper read '_Galactica'_ in fancy old fashioned print, and most of the paperwork seemed to be routine log reports and acquisition forms. Placed carefully on one side was what looked like a sheet full of computer code. _Interesting_. He picked it up and glanced through it, but then paused and began to read it more carefully, expertly scanning the page and grunting in approval. This was extremely well written. He got out a pencil and started scribbling notes in the margin.

00000

It was just after midnight when Adama finally left sickbay. She was sleeping peacefully now, showing no sign of the earlier distress that had caused him so much panic. He still had no idea what the hell was wrong with her because none of the medical staff were prepared to tell him anything. Doc Cottle certainly ran a tight ship. He may have appeared to be laid back and relaxed but now Adama knew better; even in his absence his staff still followed his principles to the letter. It was when he'd tried to access Laura Roslin's medical notes that he'd encountered a brick wall. None of Cottle's staff would let him anywhere near them. Ishay had swiftly admitted Roslin and then told him in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of there. None of the medical staff had seemed the slightest bit surprised by Laura's bizarre behaviour. He guessed that was a good sign. They seemed to think the President – strike that – _Laura_, would recover within a couple of days.

That must be some drug she'd been taking, if its withdrawal could have created those sorts of symptoms. Was it really Chamalla? Wasn't that what all those religious fanatics on Saggitaron used to get their religious kicks? And Doc Cottle had _known_ about it? Why the hell was Doc Cottle giving her that? He didn't like it, but he'd known Doc Cottle long enough to trust his judgment. If he _had_ been giving Chamalla to Laura Roslin then he would have his reasons. It went a long way to explain her sudden religious conversion; she was probably seeing all sorts of bizarre things.

Of course what this meant was that her recent behaviour must have been drug induced. That made sense, made sense of a lot. But Cottle had a duty to inform him of anything that might affect the President's ability to make decisions - and if taking Chamalla didn't figure, then what did? Starbuck's life was probably forfeit because of it. He felt the bitterness creep in on him again. Doc Cottle should have told him.

He couldn't really blame Laura anymore - she wasn't in her right mind. But if by some miracle they found the fleet and hooked up with Doc Cottle again he'd be having some strong words with him. He sighed. At least it justified his decision to remove her from a position of authority. He'd made a good call. He rounded the bend leading to his quarters, nodding to the guards waiting outside. One of them opened the hatch for him and he stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him.

A man was sitting at his desk. He was actually sitting at his desk looking through his papers. Adama stared for a second, mouth open in astonishment.

'Who are you?' he managed to force out.

The man looked up. 'Oh, sorry, is this your desk?' He grabbed a notebook and a couple of papers and stood up, scraping the chair. The sound of it jarred. Adama eyed the man suspiciously. If he called the guards now, would that give them time to get in here before the stranger attacked? He couldn't see any weapon, but there was a bag over his shoulder which could be hiding anything. Adama stood and watched warily as the man stepped around the desk and smiled at him. He had shaggy dark hair, a dark beard, and with a strange twitching motion he stuck his hand out and said, 'Daniel Faraday.'

Adama ignored the hand and pulled himself up to his full height, 'How did you get in here?'

The man wriggled uncomfortably. 'Well, it's a little complicated – I um, well, I sort of piggy backed here. Sort of.'

Adama kept his eyes on him, waiting for him to make his move. He remembered the brute strength of the Leobin model and realised that he probably wouldn't stand a chance if this one chose to spring at him. 'So. You're a Cylon,' he said.

'No. No. I'm a physicist. Spatial anomalies. Look, um, I realize that my appearance must seem odd…Ah' He winced suddenly, holding the side of his head, 'OK, this is OK. This is something that I thought might happen, this-' He screwed his eyes shut, 'OK, um, I think I'm about to–' And with a thud, he collapsed on the floor, leaving Adama still standing rooted to the spot.


	11. Clue

Chapter 11

Clue

Adama ran his finger across the star chart. Nearly four days now and they hadn't found a single ship. Not that he'd really expected them to. Even with all the Raptors out round the clock they had barely searched a fraction of the area around Galactica, never mind the huge expanse of space beyond their current position. He knew that looking for the fleet this way was a huge gamble. They were using precious fuel in the search, fuel they couldn't replace without the Tylium ship.

He had stubbornly held onto the hope that the virus was due to some malcontent on his crew, someone with a grudge. OK, so it was a long shot, but it was the better of the two options; at least it left room for the possibility that the Base Star had stumbled across them by chance and were unaware of the virus. He had hoped that when Galactica had jumped away the Base Star would move off on its own, leaving Galactica free to go back and rendezvous with the rest of the fleet. That way, virus or no virus, the fleet would be able to come together again.

He'd purposefully left it as long as he could, resisting the temptation to send out a Raptor immediately to see if the Base Star was still there. He didn't want the Cylons alerted to the fact that Galactica and the fleet were anywhere near, or that they were interested in that particular sector of space. But this was the end of the third day and soon the civilian ships would be faced with the choice of jumping back to their last coordinates or running out of essential food, water and fuel.

He couldn't afford to leave it any longer, so he'd sent out a Raptor at 1900 hours with orders to scout the periphery of the sector and jump back immediately if there was any sign of Cylon activity.

If he'd had any doubts before that this virus had been the work of the Cylons… well, there they were, four Base Stars just waiting to pick off any ships that returned. They didn't stand a chance and the Cylons knew it.

By now a few of the civilian ships would be starting to struggle; most of them were crammed full of people with no water recycling facilities and limited food and fuel. Once the Captains of the ships realized they were alone it was only a matter of time before they were forced to jump back, but instead of finding Galactica and the rest of the fleet they'd be met by four Base Stars hungry for their blood.

He focused again on the star chart. There was no way in hell Galactica could hold off four Base Stars. All that was left was to try to do the impossible and find at least some of the fleet. He stared at the chart as if somehow the ships would magically appear on the empty page. He couldn't see any way out of this. It looked like the Cylons had finally won.

The printout of the virus was lying smugly next to the star chart, a mocking reminder of their imminent defeat. He glared down at the wretched thing, seeing only the unseen hand of the traitor behind it, staring it down and willing whoever it was to come forward and fight him in the open. Of course whoever it was would stay hidden. The Cylons' methods were nothing if not underhand.

As he turned his attention back to the chart something else caught his eye; down at the bottom of the printout, like faint echoes of words, there were tiny pencil marks, almost small enough to be missed, carefully annotating the lines of computer code. He picked up the sheet of paper, peering through his reading glasses. _This was new._ The pencil marks, a tiny, neat hand. Gaeta? Baltar? They were the only ones who'd had access to this sheet of paper. Then he remembered Daniel Faraday at his desk, scribbling away with the stub of a pencil. He grabbed the phone off the wall. 'Get Baltar and Gaeta up here immediately. Is the prisoner awake yet? I want to know the minute he wakes up, understand?' He put the phone down and looked at the tiny marks again. Some of the parts of computer code had been underlined, little arrows and symbols drawn on it. This didn't look like random doodling.

Ten minutes later and Baltar was glaring at him for being dragged out of bed. 'Its just some nonsense formula,' he muttered, 'It doesn't mean anything.'

'Lieutenant Gaeta?' Gaeta looked quickly at Baltar, then at the printout. He shook his head, 'I'm sorry sir, I… it doesn't mean anything to me either. Some of these symbols, well, they're not even real.'

'Not real?'

'No, sir, they're not real mathematical symbols.'

'Unless it's some kind of code?'

Baltar poked the sheet in exasperation, 'Of course it's not a code, look, even without the weird squiggles it still doesn't make mathematical sense. And trust me, I know. After all, I am pretty sure that I am the only one here with a degree in Maths _and_ Computing.'

Adama looked steadily at the sheet of paper in front of him. He nodded slowly. 'Thank you, that'll be all.'

Baltar gave him a piercing glare, muttering as he left, 'As if _some_ of us didn't have a _bed_ to go to.'

'Dr Baltar.' Baltar turned round, an expectant sneer on his face, 'If we don't find the fleet, then you'll get your chance to sleep for a very long time because it is more than likely we'll all be dead.'

Baltar flinched, 'Of course. Of course. I didn't mean- Yes. You're right. You're right…'

After they had gone, Adama looked again at the tiny pencil marks. Maybe it was nothing, maybe he was just clutching at straws, but straws were all they had left.

00000

They'd headed northeast, away from the coast and the shoreline. Boomer had figured that the beach was too exposed and she'd wanted to stay away from higher ground as well, so they'd stayed where the jungle was thickest. It was hard going but at least they hadn't met any more Cylons. Instead they had walked and walked until the rain came on, huddling for shelter under a stand of trees that did nothing but drip huge blobs of water onto them. And now she was still wet and freezing. Except for her face. Her face was hot again around the wound. The cream from the med kit had helped, but now the med kit was with the Raptor and the Raptor was with the Cylons and they were a day's walk away.

_The images were indistinct, blurry. Boomer was under water, she could feel the pressure of the weight of the water all around her. She was in a large pool – was it the one here on Kobol? Was she dreaming about that? The walls were gray, and when she looked down at her hand she saw the red circle of the G4 detonator stuck firmly into the explosive. She wasn't asleep exactly, more in that dreamy half sleep. And it didn't feel like a dream either. When she tried to focus on it the images stepped away, almost like someone hiding just at the edge of her peripheral vision. _

She hadn't been dreaming. This felt more like her brain was leaking, like stuff was just beginning to squeeze its way out of her mind. She was smart enough to see it for what it was; a bunch of memories. Tiny snippets of things, impressions, ghosts of real life events. Being wet, submerged, holding the detonators, breaking into the arms locker, the hatch combing on C causeway, the virus. Lines and lines of computer code, all of it sharp and clear as if she were reading a shopping list or a novel. She sat quietly and wondered what the frak she'd done.

She knew what it meant of course. She had a strong _real_ memory of sitting soaking wet and dripping, a whole twelve hours of her life just gone and an armed G4 explosive sitting in her bag. She knew what it meant now. She hadn't been drugged and drenched and framed for something she hadn't done. It hadn't been like that at all. _She_ was the Cylon agent. _She_ was the one who had vented half of Galactica's water into space. It was obvious now. It must have been obvious to the Chief as well; maybe not with the water, but certainly with the hatch combing. Whoever had left that hatch open had let in the Cylon suicide bomber. She had no memories of that - but she had been there, hadn't she? By then even the Chief had been beginning to wonder.

She looked over to see Racetrack still fast asleep, curled up in her usual cat-like position. She looked so peaceful she almost expected her to give out a contented purr. Who was she kidding? Racetrack wasn't peaceful, she was exhausted. They'd been walking all day, pushing hard to get some distance between them and the Cylon smoke thing that had chased them that morning. Racetrack hadn't complained, she hadn't questioned what Boomer had told her to do. She hadn't made any suggestions either, just plodded on behind her like an obedient pet. Boomer couldn't decide whether it was admirable or just plain stupid. Didn't Racetrack realize she was with a frakking Cylon? Wasn't it obvious by now that she didn't get tired, she didn't need sleep, she didn't even seem to need to eat or drink like Racetrack did? Racetrack was weak. She was weak and fragile and Boomer was doing her best to save her, but for gods' sake, how the frak was that going to be possible now? Especially after the things spewing out of her own mind – the things she had done. She had crippled Galactica, almost gotten the Old Man blown to hell by a suicide bomber, vented their water into space- planted a virus for frak's sake. She had no idea whether the virus had activated or not. Probably. Probably why they weren't going to be rescued. No one was coming for them because she, Boomer, had fixed it so that they couldn't. She'd killed Racetrack before they'd even gotten here.

The sick feeling in her guts tore at her even more. Maybe she should just confess it all, hand Racetrack her sidearm and wait for her to shoot her. Tempting as that seemed, it wasn't going to save Racetrack. It probably wouldn't even make her feel better. If she was a Cylon they just downloaded, didn't they, turned up somewhere else? That's what Crashdown had said. That was the intel on Cylons. Even if Racetrack shot her now she wouldn't really die.

It was pitch black. There was no moon. Did this planet have moons? She still couldn't remember. Perhaps she'd never known. The Chief would know. But she wasn't thinking about the Chief. Not any more. Not now. The person she was, _Sharon_, was gone. Replaced by a monster machine. She shivered and clutched her arms around her legs, hugging herself closer because she knew now for a fact that he never would again.

00000

Adama's whole body was aching. Between Laura's sudden collapse and the joker in his room, he'd only caught about two hours sleep. He took a deep breath as he waited for the guard to open the hatch to the isolation cell. The new prisoner had woken up already – he had been unconscious for only five hours. Adama wasn't sure why this one was awake so soon. Desmond had been out cold for two days. Maybe whoever drugged them had realized they needed to adjust the dose. Baltar was running a Cylon test on this new prisoner, but it wouldn't be ready for hours, though he suspected the results were going to come up negative the same as Desmond's. The toxin blood check already looked the same; traces of alcohol but nothing else.

He stepped into the room and gestured for the guard to let him into the cell. There were two guards behind him, both with instructions to shoot if the prisoner made any sudden moves. Adama was in no mood for games.

Faraday was sitting up on the bed looking more than a little worse for wear.

'Give the prisoner some water.' The guard quickly complied, handing over a water bottle which Faraday took gratefully. He tipped back the bottle and drank thirstily, wiping his hand on the back of his mouth as he handed back the bottle.

He coughed and smiled.'Wow. That was intense.' He brushed his hands through his hair and looked up expectantly.

Adama carefully unfolded the sheet of paper with the virus on it and pushed it towards him. 'What do you know about this?'

Faraday glanced at the sheet of paper and then squinted up at him, a half smile playing on his lips. 'It's a virus. A very sophisticated piece of coding.'

'Did you write it?'

'Me? No. No, I didn't. But whoever did really knew what they were doing.'

'But you made these marks here?' Adama pointed to the pencil lines in the margin.

'Ah yes, I just jotted down a few ideas – I didn't really have time to resolve it, but I made a good start. Do you want me to explain it to you?'

'We know about the virus. And we know what it's for. I am going to ask you again: are you responsible for placing this virus on my ship?'

'No. I'm not.'

'But you know who is.'

'No, actually, I'd never even seen it before I found myself in your room.'

Adama had a sudden urge to punch this man in the mouth. With an effort he controlled himself and stood up straight, folding up the printout with a measured deliberation before he left the room. He could feel Faraday's eyes on him. The prisoner didn't say anything and Adama didn't turn back. They were playing with him. Wasting time. Time the fleet didn't have. Desmond had come across as crazy and confused, but _this_ guy Faraday knew exactly what was going on. He was smug. At that point Adama made his decision. He'd give it a few more days to try and find the fleet and then Galactica was on her own; they would leave here and try to find a habitable planet somewhere. But with Cylon agents on the ship they still weren't safe. He needed to be sure. If someone else was working with Faraday and Desmond, then he needed to know who they were.

He was surprised that the Cylons hadn't caught up with Galactica, given that he was now almost certain that they were behind the arrival of Faraday and Desmond. And he was sorely tempted to do what Tigh suggested, shove them out of the nearest airlock and vent them both into space. But there was still enough of his own father in him - the crazy-assed lawyer who insisted on defending the indefensible - to realize that summary justice wasn't justice at all and Kangaroo Courts had no place on his ship. However pissed he was with the way Faraday looked at him, the man was still human – at least to the best his knowledge – and he couldn't cut corners, he wouldn't cut corners. But nor would he endanger the lives of his crew. He had a day or two to figure out what to do with Desmond and Faraday. Not long enough.

Meanwhile they would try to get some answers. He scanned the names and faces of members of his crew and could find no one; no one but Lee.

Tigh would beat the crap out of the prisoners and get nothing from them – and so would he. He'd almost hit him, been so close, but it was obvious that the direct approach wasn't going to work.

He would have trusted Laura in her right mind – or maybe not, she was too direct, too blunt. She'd go at it like Colonel Tigh.

And Starbuck – well, she would hopefully have learned her lesson from the Leobin model. And why the hell was he including Starbuck in all his calculations anyway? – Starbuck was gone.

Captain Kelly, maybe, but he couldn't trust him with something like this, he lacked a presence, there wasn't enough authority in him to pull it off.

Gaeta was too green.

Chief Tyrol was the next man he'd choose, but he was too compassionate, weak in the wrong places for this sort of job.

Lee was the only face who came to mind; subtle and skilled enough to figure this one out, but hard enough to crack the nut if he needed to.

It was only Lee. Always Lee.

Faraday would have to go into Laura Roslin's cell. She didn't need it now anyway. He wasn't putting her back there. He'd give her quarters on Galactica once thy let her out of sick bay, and hopefully soon she'd be well enough to hold a rational conversation with him again. He'd missed that. He sighed. It was all such a frakking mess.


	12. Deconstructing

Chapter 12

Deconstructing

**Day 4**

The lights in the Brig snapped on suddenly, jarring him awake. Apollo groaned and put his arm over his eyes. Sleep seemed infinitely preferable to being awake right now. He hadn't had a full night's sleep in days and the temptation to let himself sink back into oblivion was almost irresistible. He sighed and eased himself into the present, mentally flicking through the list of flight schedules, pilots and damaged Raptors for the pre-flight briefing. He wondered how Laura Roslin was doing, hoping that his father had finally seen sense and taken this as an opportunity to keep her in sick bay rather than sending her back to the Brig. His father had been so gentle with her – he hadn't seen his Old Man that affectionate since, well, since forever. Something told him that Laura Roslin wouldn't be coming back in here.

He lay for a moment longer with his arm over his eyes enjoying the last of the peace before the day crashed in on him. He could hear the guard shuffling a little, obviously wondering whether to do any more to wake him. Apollo let out a long slow breath rubbing his hands over his eyes as he sat up slowly, yawning and blinking in the bright light. The first thing he saw was Desmond standing at the bars that separated their adjoining cells, watching him intently.

As soon as their eyes met, Desmond immediately started speaking in an anxious, agitated voice. 'I want some answers, brother, and I want them _now_.'

Apollo groaned. This was the last thing he needed right now. OK - he got it that this was probably why his father had put Desmond in here, to rough up his time in hack a little; it would have seemed like a peaceful oasis if he'd been alone

'We're on a ship, right? Right?' Desmond held onto the bars separating their cells. He'd clearly been awake for a while, though at least he'd had the good sense to wait until Apollo had woken up before launching into his barrage of questions. And why was he asking if they were on a ship? Apollo was quite sure that Desmond knew exactly where he was.

'Why are you asking me, Desmond?' Apollo swung his legs over the bed and ran his fingers through his hair.

'Because I want to _know_!' Desmond banged the bars hard, the sound rattling around the room. The guard stood up and raised his rifle. Apollo signaled him to stand down.

Desmond started pacing his cell. 'I mean, if this _is_ a ship, then where are we? What happened to the Island? Is this some sort of Dharma base or something? Look, I know I used the fail-safe key, and I'm sorry if it messed with your system, but I had no choice. The bloody computer got smashed, there was nothing else I could do - the building was falling apart. There was nothing else I could do, OK?' Desmond was shouting now, his face contorted with a mixture of rage and desperation.

Apollo stood up, keeping his voice low and calm. 'You smashed the computer?'

'No! I didn't smash the computer, _I_ thought it was all true – look, I was trying to save everyone, I thought we were going to die!'

'Where was the computer, on this ship?' Apollo was fully alert now, all traces of sleep gone.

'No, no! It was on the Island, in the Hatch on the Island. Is this another hatch? Is this one connected somehow? Is that it? Why won't you tell me where we are!' Desmond slammed his fists harder on the bars, causing Apollo to take a wary step back. He watched Desmond coolly, quickly weighing up the situation.

'Where do you think you are, Desmond?'

Desmond ran his hands nervously through his hair. 'I've no bloody clue. You say I'm on a ship, but you don't say where. I was on the Island, and the next thing I know I wake up here and no one, _no one_ will tell me what's going on.' Desmond's voice cracked. He looked dirty, disheveled and scared - the picture of a desperate man who genuinely didn't know what the hell was happening to him.

Perhaps it was much simpler than any of them had thought; perhaps Desmond _was_ just crazy – he turns up naked in the CIC without one clue about where he is and then ends up in the Brig. Wrong place at the wrong time, though how he got into the CIC in the first place was anybody's guess. But then all of them were strung so tight that anything out of the ordinary would put them on full alert. What if this was just a huge mix-up? What if this crazy man genuinely had no idea where he was? Perhaps this island he was talking about was some sort of mental institution. What if it was as simple as that?

Apollo was beginning to feel almost sorry for this guy. It had been drilled into him by his grandfather that it was beholden on a society to assume innocence rather than guilt - even if it meant believing some half baked lie from one of the succession of murderers and thieves that he had insisted on defending. Joseph Adama had always maintained that a society was judged on how it treated it's criminals. Apollo at least owed it to his grandfather's memory to hear Desmond out on his own terms rather than assuming immediately that he was a Cylon spy out to destroy them – though given the circumstances, Apollo wasn't even sure they had luxury of allowing themselves to behave like civilized people anymore. Desperation was turning them into savages.

Desmond stood quietly waiting for Apollo to speak. Apollo quietly met his gaze, 'Where are you from?' he could hear his own voice softening.

'I've already told you, I'm from Glasgow.' Desmond was quieter now. Something had shifted in the room. Maybe Desmond had sensed that Apollo was giving him a chance to explain.

'Which Colony, Desmond? – which planet?'

'Are you serious?' Desmond stared at him dumfounded, 'What planet am I from?' He shook his head. 'You telling me I'm crazy?'

'I never said you were crazy. It's a simple question. Which planet-'

'What is this? Oh, I get it, that's a joke, right? Captain Apollo. Planet. Ha ha.'

'Apollo's my call sign. My name is Lee'

'Alright _Lee_, why don't you just tell me where I am and what I'm doing here?'

'Desmond, where were you when the Colonies were destroyed?'

'Colonies? Look, I was locked up in that Hatch for three years, three years pushing that bloody button, I had no idea what was happening in the outside world.'

'Then how did you get here, Desmond?'

'I told you, I don't know.'

Apollo leaned back a little. This was getting nowhere. He decided to try a different tack. 'So, Desmond, what are you, 'Caprican? Sagittarian?'

'You want to know my star sign?'

Apollo shook his head. He checked the clock on the wall. He didn't have time for this. His shift started in ten minutes. He had to go. He felt a pang of guilt - Desmond represented too great a threat to Galactica to be allowed to remain on board. He knew that. Those were the facts. Their cozy chat just now may well have been Desmond's only chance for anyone to hear his side of it. That sucked. Along with losing the fleet, the Cylons nuking their home worlds and most everything else that had happened over the last two months. It all sucked. Every last bit of it. He caught the attention of the guard who immediately stepped forward and opened his cell door.

He knew his father wanted him to assess this prisoner, but there wasn't time. His first impression was that the guy's hold on reality was precarious, but he could easily be faking it, blanking every question with feigned ignorance. It wouldn't be hard to fake what Desmond was doing. But in the end, what the hell difference did it make? The fleet was gone. Though if this guy wasn't responsible for the virus on the ship, then that still left the question of who was. There wasn't time to figure it out now though; their priority had to be finding the fleet – and time was running out fast for many of the civilian ships.

He took one last look at Desmond, shook his head and waited as the guard opened the main hatch door, stepped back quickly as Colonel Tigh pushed his way in, flanked by four heavily armed marines. For a moment Apollo's heart was in his throat as he thought that this was it - they were coming for him, but then he realized the marines were surrounding a skinny dark haired man dressed in civilian clothes. He stepped back in surprise and waited while they formed a little procession into the Brig.

'The Old Man found another one,' muttered Tigh as he ambled past. 'This one was in his quarters. Here. Your orders.' And with a grunt he handed Apollo the ubiquitous piece of paper. Apollo sighed and took it from him, noticing Tigh's smirk as he sauntered out of the Brig.

He waited as the new man was put in the cell next to his, the one Laura Roslin had occupied. Like Desmond, this guy had a beard and hair down to his shoulders. He looked rather incongruous with a white shirt and a black tie. Now that Apollo had vacated his cell there was an empty space between the two prisoners; they could still speak but would be unable to physically interact with each other

Apollo glanced down at the sheet. His orders were to interrogate the two prisoners, see how they interacted with each other and try to find out whether they were working with other Cylon agents on board Galactica; he then had to report directly to his father before resuming his duties as CAG. Simple and straightforward. The only problem was that there was one of him and he was due in the briefing room in half an hour.

He sighed, mentally going through the list of pilots to see who he could find to take on some of his duties this morning. The only name he could come up with was Starbuck. She was the only one with the experience to act as CAG. The rest – hell, his father was right; there wasn't anyone else.

Apollo closed the hatch door and stood outside the cells, watching the new prisoner carefully. Being his fathers 'go to' man and occupying the role of disgraced prisoner was becoming more and more crazy. The poor guards didn't know how to treat him. One minute he was in the cells locked up and the next here he was playing interrogator as their superior officer. It was ridiculous. And now Colonel Tigh had doubled the guard inside the Brig so there were two marines huddled at the small table, both bristling with weapons so there was barely room for any of them to turn around. If their situation hadn't been so tragic Apollo would have laughed. Instead he shook his head ruefully and focused on the scene in front of him..

At first the new prisoner looked confused and a little frightened. He stood still for a moment before twisting around and assessing his surroundings. He finally turned to Apollo and said in a small voice, 'Look, I need to explain – I really am no threat to you at all, and I realize this must sound a little odd, but-' he stopped speaking when he caught sight of Desmond in the far cell. 'Ah, did he turn up the way I did?' Apollo's eyes widened in surprise.

'I'll take that as a yes.' The new prisoner turned across to Desmond, 'Hey! I'm Faraday. Daniel Faraday. Queen's College, Oxford. And…as we are the only two locked up here I'm guessing that you're from Earth as well, right?'

Apollo stood leaning on the guard's table, his arms folded across his chest. He had a sudden urge to laugh. _Earth?_ This was becoming more farcical by the second. Either farcical or very dangerous. He sobered up quickly. One crazy man, yes. But not two. And certainly not with one of them dangling Earth in front of them. What the hell was going on? He suddenly began to see why his father had put these two in here.

When Desmond made no move to speak, Faraday raised his eyebrows in surprise, 'Earth?' he persisted, 'It's a planet – I'm looking for-'

'Oh for god's sake!' Desmond rounded on the new man, moving to the edge of his cell and practically shouting his fury through the bars. 'Look, I know what you're up to and it won't work, OK?'

'And you are…?'

'You know who I am!' Desmond spat out the words between gritted teeth.

Apollo turned curiously to Desmond and then across to Faraday.

Faraday's eyes narrowed, 'OK… whoever you are… what is it I'm up to? – why don't you just enlighten me?'

'You drugged me and brought me here as part of a mind experiment to see just how far you could push it. Well, I know what's going on and it's not going to work.'

'You think _I_ drugged you and dragged you here…?'

Apollo couldn't help a wry smile. So much for these two working together as Cylon spies. Unless of course they had this little double act all planned…

Faraday squinted across Apollo's empty cell to Desmond. 'I'm guessing you just found yourself here, not knowing how you arrived, right? And you _are_ from Earth, yes?' there was a tinge of sarcasm to the new man's voice, quickly covered over when he saw Desmond's expression. 'Look, I can understand that this is all very confusing for you, but I can explain how you got here and I think I've figured out how to get us back-'

Apollo stepped forward. 'Hold on, you're saying you're both from Earth?' He had to hand it to them, they certainly had his attention now.

'Well what planet do you think you're from, _brother_?' it was Desmond's turn for sarcasm.

'Caprica. I'm from the planet Caprica.' There was silence.

Faraday was smiling, 'The planet Caprica? That's amazing. Absolutely amazing – what's it like? And this ship, we _are_ in space, aren't we? I could tell when I mapped your position, but how far are we from your home planet?'

Faraday's questions were laced with such sincerity and enthusiasm that in spite of himself Apollo could feel himself getting drawn in. He pulled his focus back to reality, 'You think you're from Earth? You think you're from the Thirteenth Tribe? So how did you get here? Where's your ship?'

'Oh, I don't have a ship. No, not a ship. I rode here on the back of an energy matrix – which, I assume was his.' He pointed to Desmond.

'An energy matrix?' Apollo restrained the urge to laugh out loud. OK, so they _were_ both crazy.

'Yes, incredible, isn't it?' Faraday was smiling with enthusiasm. 'I had no idea that this was even possible – I mean, of course it was within the realms of _possibility_, but let's face it, some of the possible scenarios did seem pretty unlikely. But this? I was getting close to replicating the movement of _consciousness_ through space-time, but it hadn't occurred to me that the movement of bodies could be a reality. I didn't think it was possible myself. But here we are!' Apollo stared at him with his mouth open. This was definitely not what he had expected.

Faraday's expression grew serious. 'Look, I realize that our arrival must have seemed a little alarming, but I assure you,' and here he started waving his arms expansively and speaking slowly and carefully as if Apollo didn't speak English, 'that we mean you no harm. We just got caught in an experiment that worked really, _really_ well. _Now_,' he said more briskly, directing his words at Desmond, 'I think I've figured out how to get us back, but-' and he turned again to Apollo, 'You'll have to let us out of here first.'

'You want me to let you out?' Apollo smiled. _Of course he does._

'Yes.'

'And why would I _want_ to do that?'

'Well, for a start because you are clearly advanced enough to understand the implications of what is happening; we don't belong here – and although I don't necessarily hold to the position that space-time is vulnerable to random violent events, there is still the possibility that this is the case. And… well, to be honest, I'm wondering if I haven't just opened a Pandora's box. On balance the best thing, I think, in the circumstances would be for you,' he pointed at Apollo, 'to let us go and for me,' he pointed to his chest, 'to try and send back the ones who got pulled in from this side-'

Apollo shook his head in a sort of amused disbelief. 'Hold on, you're trying to tell me that someone from here has gone - where?'

'I'm saying that _two_ separate event sequences went from this place to Earth - once the hole had been opened in space-time they must have been sucked into it. I can draw you a map if you like.'

What was this? Crazy land? What should he do, go along with it, or just walk out and start flying Raptor missions to try and find the fleet? With an ache he suddenly wished Starbuck were here. With her brutal good sense it would take her all of two seconds to start scaring the crap out of these two clowns. She always found a way to ram some sense into a situation. Not always the sense he wanted, but… with an effort he pulled himself back to the present. He had to focus on the two jokers in front of him. Fine. What did it matter?

'A map. Yeah. That would be good.'

'Pen? Paper?' Faraday's expression was confident, almost cocky now. A little bit like Baltar, Apollo realised with a sigh. Didn't the guy realize the danger he was in?

Apollo pulled out a flight schedule from his pocket and handed it across the bars, reluctantly giving Faraday a short pencil as well. He hoped he wasn't going to stab anyone with it, but Faraday took the pencil like a long lost friend and started drawing quickly on the back of the paper.

'I'll draw it to scale to make it clearer.' He marked a series of lines across the paper to make a grid, 'Be easier if I had a straight edge.' He looked up as if Apollo should have supplied him with a decent ruler and set square as well, then frowned in concentration and turned his attention back to the page. 'OK, _here_ is where we are, and _here_ and _here_ are where the two events occurred. There is a large mass _here_ – I assume that is a planet - and at the time there were various signatures _here_, _here_ and _here_.' Apollo looked down at the picture emerging from the page. He could see it too. The planet was Kobol and Faraday was mapping out their positions, marking in each ship.

'How did you get this information?' Apollo's voice was sharp with suspicion. Faraday glanced up dismissively, then realised from the look on Apollo's face that a more careful response was needed.

'OK, just imagine that a hole is punched through the fabric of space-time, so that for that one moment it is possible to measure across the folds.' He raised his eyebrows as if that should be all the explanation Apollo would need in order to understand what he was trying to say, but when he saw Apollo's look hardening, he reassessed his explanation, 'Look, space and time are linked, a bit like that blanket over there. If you can think of individual times and locations in space as separate folds in the blanket and at the same time hold onto the idea that it is still one blanket, then that is sort of an analogy as to how the deeper levels of the universe are constructed. Once a hole was made in one fold I could see through to a completely different fold. And then it was simply a matter of mapping the energy matrix signatures that I could see. If you want to know how I did that, well, it would involve a visit to my lab in Oxford, which could be arranged, but probably wouldn't be such a good idea as I have no clue how all this is affecting the timelines here or on Earth - and I would be a pretty poor scientist if I just went around screwing the human race, now wouldn't I?'

Faraday delivered a final, patronizing smile and a wave of his arm before he turned back to the map, 'Now, here are where the two events happened – one _here_,' he circled a small marker near Kobol, 'and the other _here_,' another circle, nearer the fleet this time. 'Both had two life signatures.'

Apollo looked curiously at the diagram in front of him, there was the Base Star orbiting Kobol, there was the fleet, and…

'...and when was this supposed to have happened?'

'Ah, well, the _when_ is a tricky one; _when_ is a very relative term - but there was a massive energy discharge just as this one popped through,' he circled the small mark near the planet Kobol, 'and this one happened at roughly the same time, though it was further from the epicenter, so it's trajectory was more curved. Do your ships have some sort of hyper light capability?'

'FTL, yes.'

'FTL?'

'Faster than light. It's a hyper light drive.'

'Ah, OK, yes, yes that makes sense. If that was activated around the area here, near the hole, then yes, they would have been sucked back in. Of course, that makes sense now. And that might explain why _he_,' he pointed over at Desmond again, 'was pulled in– does this ship have a hyper light too?'

Apollo nodded.

'Right, so that would explain it – somehow the ship's hyper light must have activated in the same event field, creating a sort of push-pull effect.'

'In that case why didn't Galactica get sucked in too?'

'Too big, I guess. The hole isn't vast, but it would have produced enough of a cascading effect to create a significant vortex – though certainly not large enough for anything other than a small craft.'

Apollo had to admit he was shaken. This man was clearly some sort of Cylon spy. There was no other way he could have plotted their positions with that level of accuracy. He hesitated a moment, figuring out whether or not he should tell his father before or after the pre-flight briefing.

Faraday must have sensed his hesitation because he quickly added, 'Look, I know it's a lot to take in, but I think it's important that we work together on this - Oh, and in the spirit of mutual cooperation… that virus that the Commander showed me? – here, these are the four possible permutations.' He wrote down a series of numbers. 'I think that's right. I got a good look at the figures, so I'm pretty sure that's correct. I never forget a number – here.'

Apollo looked confused.

'The virus,' explained Faraday, 'That's the solution. Those four are the only possible trajectories - I assume they're coordinates. They would all involve the use of a hyper light drive, though – let's see, one of them would find you about here, I guess,' he marked a position on the map he had drawn, 'Another around here, third one here and the fourth is off this map - here, I'll scale it to a smaller graph,' he drew a small square box, marking in the landmark of Kobol and placing an X in the corner of his new grid, '- somewhere over here.'

Apollo was stunned. These were complex calculations. Not even Gaeta or Baltar could plot a set of jump coordinates from a string of numbers without running it through several subroutines first. Faraday must have read his thoughts, 'I've always been good at numbers. Lousy with names but great with numbers.' He handed the paper through to Apollo, and reluctantly gave him the pencil as well. 'I'd really appreciate my notebook back,' he said wistfully.

Apollo looked down at the piece of paper. Was this for real? What was this supposed to be? Faraday had said it was the resolution of the virus, but why would the virus need resolving? Surely it had fulfilled it's purpose already. The fleet was scattered. Was Faraday really saying that the fleet were at those coordinates? Or maybe it was just a ridiculous story with a very accurate map of all their positions and the positions of various Cylon Base Stars that he couldn't possibly have known about unless he was some kind of Cylon agent. He nodded to Faraday and moved away from his cell. He gestured to one of the guards to open the hatch door to the Brig. As the guard opened the door, he gave him a puzzled look. Apollo shrugged and headed toward the flight deck.


	13. Hard Six

Chapter 13

Hard Six

Boomer must have finally dozed off because the next thing she knew the sunlight was bright in her face. She realized it had to be well into mid morning because it was already getting hot and the sparkling sunshine was piercing the leaves at an acute angle. There wasn't a breath of wind. Everything was still. It was almost as if she was perfectly alone here, perfectly safe. She lay for a moment, watching how the light lifted the shine off the leaves of the plants in front of her. It was beautiful.

A sound to her left made her startle. She winced in the bright light as she tried to see what had caused it. She could just make out the outline of Racetrack's form, sitting cross legged a couple of feet away from her. Boomer shifted uncomfortably, her back aching where a small stone was jutting out of her makeshift bed and making its presence felt in the small of her back. She sat up slowly, sucking in her breath as the movement pumped the blood into her face and made it throb even more. It was then that she realized that Racetrack was cradling her sidearm in her lap and staring right at her. Boomer froze, panic ripping through her. _Racetrack was about to shoot her._

_Racetrack knew. _

_She knew_.

She must have finally figured it out. Was it that obvious?

Boomer's breath stuck in her chest as her mind raced, trying to figure out the moment Racetrack had realized what she really was. Had she cried out in her sleep? Or was it when she'd held Racetrack under the water, or… _of course_. Racetrack had seen them on the Base Star, she'd looked back and seen all those other Sharons right before they took off, before the nuke exploded.

Racetrack must have been waiting all this time to get the advantage before she made her move. She could have shot her in her sleep. That would have been the kinder way - but then maybe she wanted to confront her first, or give her a slow horrible death. Boomer took a deep breath before she dared to look up and meet Racetrack's eyes. It took all she had to face her, to keep her gaze away from Racetrack's hands so she didn't have to see the gun that she knew would be pointing straight at her.

Racetrack met her eyes with a half smile, put her head to one side and said, 'Your face isn't looking too good again, Boomer.'

Boomer stared at her. _Her face?_ She was looking at her frakking face? Her eyes flicked down to the sidearm still in Racetrack's lap.

'You think a bullet would go right through that smoke thing?' Racetrack asked nonchalantly, noticing where Boomer was looking. She picked up the sidearm and held it for a moment, examining it carefully as if it would give her the information if she inspected it closely enough. Then she shrugged and leaned over, snapping the gun back in its holster. 'I let you sleep in,' she said hesitantly. 'You looked like you needed it.' Racetrack's tone was uncertain, as if she needed Boomer's permission to let her sleep through the morning. 'There's no sign of anything though,' Racetrack continued, as if she was still trying to justify not waking her. 'I made a couple of circuits, but I think we're safe for now.'

_Racetrack had been guarding her?_ Boomer sat perfectly still watching Racetrack with astonishment.

'But seriously, Boomer, that wound on your face-'

Boomer stifled a laugh, almost giddy with relief.

'What's so funny?'

Boomer shook her head.

'What?' Racetrack started grinning too.

'It's just - here we are, totally _frakked_ and you're worried about my face?'

'It could be serious, Boomer. If you've got an infection, you've got to be careful.'

_Careful?_ She was a frakking Cylon. No way would Racetrack be telling her to be careful if she any idea what she really was. She closed her eyes and breathed out a long slow breath. By some frakking miracle Racetrack had no idea. Which was all wrong. Racetrack _should_ be able to guess. It _should_ be obvious. How the hell were Galactica and the fleet going to survive if it was _this_ easy for her to pretend to be one of them? Especially after she'd left clue after clue telling them that she was a threat. How could they have been so dumb and miss what was staring them in the face?

'Does it hurt?' Racetrack's voice startled her out of her thoughts. 'Your face, does it hurt?'

'Yeah,' she said slowly, 'It feels kind of hot and-'

Racetrack took a deep breath, 'Look, we need the med kit. We have to go back – I could go, maybe I could at least _see_, maybe the Cylons have gone… I mean-'

'No,' Boomer cut in quickly, 'It's too soon. It was only yesterday that thing chased us - hardly more than a day. Maybe in a couple of days we can both go back together.'

Racetrack nodded, and swallowed hard. They both knew what their chances were if they went back there. Still, she appreciated the gesture. Racetrack had basically said she'd put her life on the line to try and save her. _Unbelievable_. The girl was totally clueless. Racetrack should be scared of her. She should have shot her in her sleep.

'So- What now?' Racetrack asked her.

Boomer closed her eyes. They couldn't keep walking aimlessly around the jungle. That wasn't going to work. They were more likely to bump into a Cylon patrol. Besides they had no water, food or shelter, and when that rain came down it was so damn cold. With an ache she suddenly wished Helo was there with her. Racetrack sat there so quietly, like some obedient dog waiting to be told what to do. Helo wouldn't have done that. Helo would have known. _Hell_, Helo would have told _her_. She finally tried to meet Racetrack's gaze again, but couldn't help her eyes from straying away towards the trees.

'We'll make a camp,' she said quietly. 'Find water, shelter, food, then in a few days we'll go back to the Raptor.'

Racetrack nodded. It was a solid plan.

_It was. _

_Maybe. _

She was feeling so godsdamn tired. She took a deep breath as she felt her eyes well up, scrunching them shut and then wincing as the movement tore at her face. Suddenly she didn't feel so strong. Being a Cylon didn't make you strong. She was a weak frakking mess.

'Hey,' Racetrack must have seen her crying because she got up, squeezing her shoulder gently. 'We can do this, Boomer.'

_No._ She couldn't.

00000

The moment Daniel Faraday started talking about home planets and spaceships, Desmond realized that John Locke had probably been right, this _was_ all an elaborate mind game. The failsafe must have been a sham; the shaking building, the knives flying around. It had all been a cleverly orchestrated trick - and what _that_ meant was that those bastards had been observing him for years. He had no idea what sort of creepy organization was behind all of this, but one thing was clear; they had no intention of letting him go. They'd held him for three years in that Hatch and God only knew how long they were prepared to keep him in this new place. He wasn't one hundred percent sure exactly what the purpose of all this was – maybe something to do with eroding his sense of reality to the point where he lost his mind. When would they decide that they had finished with him? When he went as crazy as Laura? There was nothing ethical or moral about this at all, it was obvious that he was nothing more than a guinea pig in their little experiment. When he'd finally stopped pushing that button they'd simply moved him to a different facility for another set of experiments. That was the truth and it hit him like a brick.

He had to find a way to protect himself. Halfway through the conversation between Apollo and Faraday he'd realised that the only way to safeguard his sanity was to ignore what they said to him. He would treat this whole charade exactly like a visit to the theatre. These were the actors, this was the play, and he was just the audience; amused, entertained, but never part of the action. He would watch and observe but he wouldn't engage or interact with any of them. Ultimately none of it was real.

Once he had decided to ignore them he lay back on the bed and filled his mind with memories of his life with Penny. It was bittersweet even thinking about her because he knew there was a good chance that he would never see her again, he would never get the opportunity now to say he was sorry. He'd been a prize prick and he really didn't deserve to have her anyway. He just hoped she was happy and had found someone who could love her better than he ever could. He had never stopped loving her, but even thinking about how much he really cared was pointless and specious because she never knew what he really felt and now that he had finally come to his senses he couldn't tell her. He'd had the chance of happiness and he'd thrown it away.

'So, what exactly did you do?'

Desmond looked up sharply. Faraday was standing holding the bars, his head cocked to one side, watching him across the empty expanse of Apollo's vacant cell. There was no sign of Apollo. He must have gone.

'I mean, what was the last thing you remember before you ended up here?'

Desmond stared down at the floor. If he answered, then he'd just give them more opportunities to mess with his mind. They weren't going to give anything away. He'd had no success at all when he tried to find out where they were. Apollo – _Lee,_ as he was now called - hadn't told him anything. They had asked a lot of questions, but none of them were prepared to give him any answers.

Faraday ignored Desmond's pointed silence and kept on talking. 'What did you do? It must have been something _really_ impressive to create the sort of standing wave that would have brought you here.'

Desmond refused to look up. He kept his eyes trained on the floor, counting his breaths until Faraday gave up and left him alone.

'Look, you need to listen to me. It's very important. Whatever you did made a hole in space-time and catapulted you here – you're not where you should be. You're not even on Earth any more. Do you understand that? Are you listening to me?'

Desmond just stared blankly at the floor, blotting out the sound of Faraday's voice, determined to shore himself up against all the crazy lies. He closed his eyes and thought of Penny, reading her letter in his mind and letting it soothe him into some sort of peace, mumbling her words softly to drown out Faraday's voice. '_Please don't give up, Des. Because all we really need to survive is one person who truly loves us. And you have her. I will wait for you. Always. Love you, Pen._

I love you too, Penny,' he whispered softly.

00000

Apollo carefully folded the map and put it in his pocket. He was late. The pilots were already in the briefing room and he could hear from the wave of noise coming up the corridor to meet him that they were bored and restless. When he entered the room they settled down but the air was still fizzing with their restless energy. Dee was waiting nervously to one side. She handed him a sheaf of papers, smiling shyly before slipping back to her station in CIC. He watched her go for a brief second before being called back to give his attention to the crowded room.

'Hey, Apollo!' someone called out, 'What's the matter, you slept in? Hack too comfy for you?' The room swelled with laughter. At least some of the crew were in good spirits.

Apollo raised his eyebrows with a half smile and made his way up to the podium, holding up a hand for quiet. 'OK, that's enough. Listen up, people, let's focus here.' He checked though the pile Dee had given him. 'It's been four days and some of those civilians ships will be in trouble, so we need to find them soon. Skulls, you're with me, OK?' Skulls nodded. He moved around the room handing out sheets of paper to each of the pilots and ECO's. Gaeta had mapped out a search pattern for each crew, plotting every jump.

'So, you all have your flight plans? Good, the drill's the same; check and RE-CHECK your coordinates. That's YOU, Crashdown, I didn't save your ass on Kobol to have you screw up and jump into the middle of an asteroid field. Oh, and if you see any sign of Cylon activity you jump the hell out of there, OK? Alright, you know what to do, now get to it.'

There was a scramble as the pilots flipped off their seats and jostled to the door. Skulls stood awkwardly by the wall waiting for him.

'You go ahead and get the Raptor checked off,' Apollo said, 'I'll meet you in the hanger deck' Skulls nodded and left the room, leaving Apollo alone for the first time in days. He stood for a moment reveling in the silence. Then he took Faraday's map out of his pocket and looked at it again. Faraday had probably written down a list of random numbers. He had to check it out though, and it made more sense to do that before he reported to his father. He looked again at the piece of paper with the map on it, then quickly took out his pencil and copied the numbers onto a clean sheet of paper. Once he'd checked over Faraday's figures he'd go find his father.

Thankfully his father wasn't in CIC, but Colonel Tigh was. He gave Apollo a suspicious look.

'I need to check a couple of coordinates with Lieutenant Gaeta,' Apollo said quickly, catching Dee's surprised glance. They both knew that Gaeta would have checked and re-checked the jumps for that day. Apollo shot her an awkward half smile, hoping she'd just let it go. She smiled back before she focused again on her station. He let out the breath he'd been holding and then moved quickly to Gaeta's station, handing him the list of coordinates that Faraday had given him.

'Could you plot these?'

'Where did you get those, they don't look like anything I-'

'Just plot them, Lieutenant.'

Gaeta sighed and looked at the numbers. 'Give me five minutes, OK?' Apollo nodded and turned away. Tigh was clearly just itching for this opportunity…

'So how's the Brig, Apollo?'

'Just fine, Colonel.'

'I guess with Starbuck gone you just couldn't resist taking her place as the officer least fit to wear the uniform.'

'Oh? I thought that title belonged to you.' The words were out before he could stop himself. That drunken bastard had got too far on the back of his friendship with his father and the whole ship knew it. The CIC suddenly went very quiet.

He watched as Tigh reeled, recovered and then smiled. 'I guess you caught some of her insolent mouth as well. But truth is, Apollo, _you_ are in the Brig and _I_ am the XO on this ship. Now do what you need to do here then get the hell out and go do what you are _supposed_ to be doing and fly your frakking plane.'

Apollo swallowed what he was going to say and wordlessly turned back to Gaeta.

Gaeta cleared his throat, looking nervously from Apollo to Tigh. 'Well Sir, I've plotted the coordinates you gave me,' Gaeta kept his voice low 'One here, here, here, and the fourth is way outside the sector we are looking at, it's at least three, maybe four jumps away.'

Apollo nodded. 'Plot them.'

'Excuse me, sir? I-'

'Plot them, plot the jumps.'

'But we're not searching-'

'Is there a problem Mr Gaeta?' Tigh's voice boomed through the CIC. Gaeta looked anxiously up at Apollo who held his gaze steadily, willing him to just shut the frak up and get on with it.

Gaeta's eyes flicked assent. 'No sir. No problem.'

'Then do your job, Mr Gaeta.'

Gaeta turned back to his computer and typed in the numbers. A few minutes later he jotted down four coordinates on the side of the chart.

Apollo glanced over at Tigh, hesitated then spoke quietly to Gaeta. 'Look, tell my father I've nothing to report, OK?'

Gaeta looked confused for a moment, echoing his anxious look over at Tigh, clearly uneasy about going behind the Colonel's back. Everyone in CIC had heard what Apollo had said to him and typical of Gaeta's ass-licking instincts he would want to stay out of it. Apollo raised his eyebrows at Gaeta, who blinked and then nodded, 'Of course sir, I'll pass on your message when the Commander gets here.' Apollo nodded his thanks and picked up the papers.

Once Apollo was safely in the corridor he pulled out the map Faraday had made and compared the positions to those on Gaeta's star chart. The two were identical. Somehow Faraday had accurately plotted those four numbers on a star chart. It had to be a bluff. Either Faraday was a genius or he had memorized the coordinates and their corresponding positions. Either way, he couldn't ignore it now. Galactica needed the fleet. For a start their fuel reserves wouldn't last for long. A Battlestar wasn't designed to hold enough fuel for multiple jumps. And besides, weren't the civilians the point? Weren't they the reason for the military? He had sworn to protect the colonies with his life, and if there was even a chance of finding the fleet it was his duty to take it.

He debated whether or not to tell his father, but really, what was the point? Either the fleet was there or it wasn't. He was the CAG, this whole thing smelled of a trap and no way was he going to send any of his pilots out on some dumb one-way mission to check it out. If anyone was going it had to be him, and he'd go alone. It wasn't as if they weren't frakked anyway. If they didn't find the fleet they hadn't a hope in hell of getting through this. All he was doing was bringing forward his own end time. Besides, it wasn't exactly as if he was enjoying himself.

When he reached the hanger deck Skulls was already kitted up, standing by the waiting Raptor. 'Look Skulls, you stay behind on this one, OK?'

'Excuse me sir, I-'

'You heard me, this one's a solo.'

'Sir, is there a problem?' Chief Tyrol was leaning against the side of the Raptor, wiping his hands with an oily rag. He squinted up at Apollo, his face full of focused concern

'No problem Chief, I'm just taking this one out on my own.'

'But sir, regulations…'

'I'm the CAG, Chief. It's my call. We're short on ECO's and we need to get as many of these in the air as we can. Skulls, you team up with Kat and rotate with Crashdown.' As he shut the hatch, the Chief's anxious face told him he didn't buy it, but hopefully he wasn't suspicious enough to alert anyone in CIC. He powered up the Raptor and took off quickly, taking one last look at Galactica before he pulled away. She was still huge and imposing, but strangely alone without the little ducklings of the civilian ships that he'd gotten so used to seeing huddled beside her over the last few months.

Once he was clear he slipped back to the ECO station to spool up the FTL drive. Gaeta had plotted all the points in a search pattern. OK, so maybe it wouldn't be long before his father got suspicious and sent another Raptor out after him. Or not. Maybe he'd figure it wasn't worth the risk.

The jump to the first set of coordinates took him into empty space. So did the second and the third. That just left the final sequence of four jumps to get to the last set of coordinates. This one took him furthest away from Galactica, out of range of any communications. It was always going to be the kicker. He was ready to spring the trap – and whether he ended up jumping into the center of an asteroid or landing cheek to jowl with a Cylon base star, the end would be the same. His plan was to blow the Raptor rather than let the Cylons capture it. He couldn't risk leading them back to Galactica if he or the Raptor got captured.

His father was right, sometimes you just had to roll the hard six.

He took a deep breath and punched in the first set of numbers. Then the second. At the third jump he paused and sat quietly for a moment. _So this was it._ He inputted the numbers carefully, mentally going through the drill for when the Cylons attacked. He doubted there would be time for him to jump away again; the coordinates were probably going to take him right into the middle of them. Well, at least it would be over fast. He took a deep breath, and started the clock. Jump in five, four, three, two, one. JUMP. He closed his eyes.


	14. Broken Bottles

Chapter 14

Broken Bottles

The waves splashed and splattered onto the gray stones, pushing their way forward before being sucked back with a silvery sigh. On and on they came, never giving up, imperceptibly wearing away the rough rocks to make them rounded and smooth. However ineffectual each rush of waves was, it still made a difference, a huge difference over time. The whole landscape was shaped by these little waves rushing in and then retreating.

Rush in.

Retreat.

Rush in.

Retreat.

They never gave up.

Sayid sat watching them, mesmerized. Like him, the waves didn't have a choice. Some unseen force dragged them around, forwards and backwards, with an irresistible pull. In the same way something in him kept him going, tugging him back to the world of the living in spite of all he was, of all he'd done, all the memories and the nightmares he carried around with him every waking moment. He had been a good man once, and for a while he had hoped that he could be again. But now? Now he realized the change in him was too fixed. He could never go back to innocence now.

What was it inside him? A bare, raw, will to survive? No, it was more like some demon that just kept him going despite the fact that he knew he didn't deserve to live. Or maybe it was a demon sent to punish him, to tempt him with life and joy and then watch him writhe when it was snatched away from him again and again and again.

'Hey Dude.' He looked up, squinting a little as the sun caught his eyes. Hurley sat down heavily next to him. 'There's food and stuff if you want some. Bernard killed a boar.'

Sayid shook his head, 'Thank you Hurley, but I'm not hungry.'

So Bernard was killing the boar now? With Jack, Kate and Sawyer gone, and Desmond, Locke and Mr Eko dead, who was left with any sort of survival skills? Though looking around at the camp, this group seemed to be doing alright.

'Look, it wasn't your fault, Sayid. They knew we were coming and they were just ready, that's all.'

He squinted out to the horizon, barely acknowledging Hurley's words. He had thought he could offer this group of strangers something useful. But all he'd done was put them in danger. He'd messed up. They'd all been relying on him. It'd been _his_ plan, _his_ idea to take the boat, _his_ idea to walk them knowingly into that trap. Why had he been such a fool to think that he had the military edge, that he had such a good plan when in reality he'd completely misjudged what they were up against? Not only had he failed to rescue any of them, he'd gone and lost Desmond's boat as well and nearly allowed Sun to get killed in the process.

'I should have realized.' He said under his breath, 'Never underestimate the enemy, Hurley, especially people fighting on their own soil. Of all people, I should know that. The Others have lived here all their lives. I should have known better.'

Hurley shrugged, 'It was all a mess, Sayid. And, well, they let Michael and Walt go. And me. Maybe they'll let Jack, Kate and Sawyer go as well.'

Sayid let out a breathy laugh. 'Yes Hurley, and maybe pigs will fly.'

Hurley was quiet for a moment, but Sayid could almost hear his thoughts scrabbling around, trying to find something to say that would make him feel better. He appreciated it, he truly did, but nothing that Hurley could say or do was going to make any difference. He was beyond that.

'It's not your fault, I mean, you can't blame yourself. You did your best and everyone gets that, it's just-'

'I don't think Jin is going to forgive me for putting Sun's life at risk.'

Hurley wriggled uncomfortably, 'Yeah, OK, so maybe not Jin, but the rest of us? Dude, we're right behind you. Look, you sure you don't want something to eat? The boar's really good.'

Sayid smiled. He felt like a child being persuaded to come back to the party after throwing a tantrum. He tried to remember his own mother and the hopes and dreams she'd had for him. It didn't really matter now.

'Thank you Hurley, but I'm really not hungry.'

Hurley nodded, 'Well, if you change your mind…' he smiled over at him then at the sea stretching away in front of them. They sat for a couple of uncomfortable minutes. It was a shame for Hurley that he really didn't do companionable silences.

'Well, I guess I'll get back to the camp then.' Hurley rubbed the sand off his knees, 'I…. do you see that? What _is_ that? That a plane?' Hurley pushed himself awkwardly to his feet and squinted into the horizon. Sayid followed his gaze. The sun was heading to the west and the growing speck was moving towards them from the South, light glinting off it. It was low down on the horizon and seemed to be heading straight towards them. He scrambled up quickly and watched as the black speck grew larger.

'Hey, it's a plane! It's a plane!' Hurley started waving his arms wildly in the air, jumping up and down on the sand and shouting, 'Hey! Hey!' Sayid could hear the rest of the camp stirring behind them. He kept his eyes on the plane, willing it to be the one to rescue them, to take them off this nightmare place.

The black speck came quickly into focus, and immediately Sayid could see that it was in trouble. It was flying fast and diving towards them at an angle that would crash it straight into the Island. He saw Hurley grow still as he too realized what was happening, and they both watched silently, arms by their sides, as the plane came sharply into view.

It was a type of plane Sayid had never seen before, with two wide arms curving inwards and a cylinder-shaped cockpit that didn't look particularly aerodynamic. It was going to crash, making a low screeching sound that grew steadily louder as it hurtled towards the beach. Sayid quickly calculated the distance. At this rate it would only miss their camp by about fifty yards, but at least they didn't have to worry about it killing them all. He was wondering if the pilot was even alive inside there when suddenly the plane changed course, dipping slightly to the side and then taking a sharp nose dive straight into the sea. He heard a gasp from Hurley and the others as they all watched it plunge into the water.

There was silence.

'Man, that sucks.' Hurley shook his head. Sayid could feel the numb shock of the rest of the survivors as they looked at the spot where the plane had gone down. The sea was too deep so there was no chance of swimming out there and taking a look. Even if they'd had Desmond's boat… suddenly a roaring sound filled his ears, and in front of them the sea turned into a seething mass as a huge gray monster reared up out of surf in front of them. They scattered as it tore its way through water and sand, its huge bulk cutting into the beach. Sayid flung himself to the side, watching as the beast's momentum carried it up towards the tree line, grinding itself into the sand until it finally came to a halt at the edge of the jungle.

It didn't take long for Sayid to realize that it was the plane, the same one they'd just seen. It must have flown _under_ the water and then scraped up the beach. He ran up the sand and into his tent, grabbing the gun from where he had hidden it and racing back towards the plane. Hurley and Charlie were already there. It was almost completely buried, with only the rear section showing gray above the yellow of the sand. The back of the plane was just a curve. The whole thing looked strange and slightly sinister. Something about it made Sayid wary. He'd been caught out one time too many. This time he was going to be more careful.

'Should we try and dig it out?' Charlie began to climb up onto the top of the cockpit.

'Wait!' Sayid held him back, 'We don't know what it is or who sent it. For all we know it might be rigged.'

'Oh c'mon, Sayid, there must be a pilot in there, we need to get him out!' Charlie pulled away and started pushing the sand away from the top. Hurley scrambled up to join him. Sayid took a deep breath. Charlie was right. He was getting too jumpy. They had to get the pilot out.

They took turns digging. The drama of the stricken plane had attracted people from the beach camp that Sayid had barely seen before and had certainly never bothered speaking to. They were keen at first, eager to find the pilot and see if there was any hope of rescue. But after an hour of fruitless digging most of them got tired and gave up, drifting back to the camp to eat and wait and watch for the faithful few to complete the task and save the pilot.

They had all become too reliant on too few, Sayid thought bitterly.

The light was beginning to fade by the time they had uncovered the top section of the cockpit. It was made of some sort of molded metal or plastic combination that seemed immensely strong, like a resin of some sort. After a while there was just Sayid, Charlie, Hurley, Jin and some guy they all called Frogurt. They worked hard piling the sand away, lighting torches and sticking them into the ground when the light faded. It wasn't long before the clouds building on the horizon shut out the last of the light from the evening sun and it became so dark that even with the torches they could barely see what they were doing. As the first drops began to fall, they were still searching for some sort of door, but they couldn't see any way in or out of the cylindrical cockpit. They had dug down to a thin strip that seemed to serve as a windshield, but it was only a few inches high and no one was getting in or out of there. They tried shining the light from one of the torches, but all that met them was an inky blackness. It was either too dark or there was some sort of seal on it. When the rain started to pelt down on them the diggers called it a night and left Sayid keeping watch, nursing his pistol in front of him.

00000

'Give me those coordinates.'

Gaeta handed the paper to Adama.

'Where did he get them?'

'He didn't say, sir.'

Adama grunted. He guessed this was Faraday's doing. And he guessed it was a trap. Apollo must have had the same thought, or why else would he have left his ECO behind? His son knew fine well it was a suicide mission, but typical of Lee, he still had to try. And typical of Lee, he hadn't told him what he was planning. Instead Apollo had left him waiting eight hours until the end of his shift to figure out why he hadn't shown. Adama controlled the expression on his face while he crumpled the paper tightly in his fist.

'How long has he been gone?'

'The Chief said he took the Raptor out about eight hours ago. What you want to do, send someone out after him?'

'Dee, send a Raptor out to each of those coordinates.'

'What if it's a trap?' Tigh squinted up at the Dradus monitor.

'Then they'll have to jump the hell out of there. Fast.' Tigh grunted and nervously pulled at the collar of his uniform.

Of course it was a trap. And of course it was just a matter of time…

For the next two hours they barely spoke. Adama brushed off the increasingly anxious comments from Colonel Tigh while keeping his own nerves in check. He felt blinded – blinded by concern for his son to the point where nothing else seemed to matter. Apollo had been right of course, nothing was served by risking any more. But he couldn't just do nothing and leave him behind. Faraday's plan must have been to lure Galactica to those coordinates and, by going himself, Apollo had made sure that the risk to Galactica was minimal. They had to find him. Bring him back.

Adama stood silently in the CIC waiting for the Raptors to come back in one by one.

'That's the last of the Raptors returned, Sir. None of them report seeing anything. No sign of debris, and no sign of Apollo.'

'You think he's been captured?' Tigh voiced the question in Adama's own mind.

Adama didn't say anything.

'If Apollo's been captured then they'll have our position. I recommend we jump to a different sector.'

'No. We stay right here.'

'But Bill…'

'You heard me, Colonel.'

'Yes Sir.'

After another six hours the slither of hope Adama had been nursing somehow found its way into his heart. He had never liked the waiting. It made him feel impotent. It was the one aspect of being a commander that he had found hardest to adjust to. But he had gotten used to it in time. And now, now he couldn't bear it, couldn't stand it, couldn't make himself look at one more blip on the Dradus screen knowing that each slow hour strangled the life out of his chances of ever seeing his son again. Even after the Raptors had returned, he still imagined that perhaps Lee had chosen to carry on with the rest of that day's flight schedule. That would be like him. But now Apollo's shift was long over and now there was no reason for him to be out there.

It had been sixteen hours.

And now Adama was waiting like some foolish old man who refused to go to bed because his son had just died and he couldn't bear the thought of waking up the next morning and knowing it would still be true.

Apollo had gone and he had better get used to it.

When he finally dragged himself to his quarters he grabbed a bottle from his liquor cabinet, poured himself a glass and downed it in one. The second and third did nothing to numb the pain, but by the time he'd made his way through half the bottle the rawness of it was beginning to blur a little. Apollo wasn't coming back. Adama sat in his chair, bottle in hand, looking at the picture of Zak and Lee on his desk. Both gone now. Both gone and there wasn't a godsdamn thing could do about it.

The marines outside the Brig snapped to attention the moment they saw him, pushing open the hatch door for him as he blundered inside.

'Give me your sidearm.' The guard hesitated, then snapped to attention and handed him the gun.

'Now get out.' The guard shot a quick, frightened glance toward the prisoners before he left, closing the heavy hatch door behind him.

The Brig was dark after the brightness of the corridor. Adama held the gun gently in both hands, turning it over, feeling the metal hard and cold, savoring the familiar weight of it. The cells were dark and both prisoners appeared to be asleep. He automatically checked the chamber, gently clicking off the safety catch. He didn't look up, but gave all his attention to the solid lump in his hands. The combination of liquor and tiredness had left his thinking woolly and his emotions raw.

He could end this now.

With one sharp ragged breath he stepped forward towards Faraday's cell, arms by his side, the gun pointing at the floor. He stood swaying, staring daggers at the sleeping form of the prisoner in front of him. Then he pulled the gun up to shoulder height, aiming it square at Faraday's head.

He stood there a long time, his uneven breathing rasping around the cells. He didn't move. Apart from the sounds of his own breathing and the frantic thumping of his heart, the room was perfectly quiet and still. Almost peaceful. He imagined how loud the gun would sound when it went off. It would shatter everything, it would probably shatter him too. And he couldn't afford to be shattered, not right now. Not when his crew still needed him.

With an effort he let his arm drop back to his sides, his eyes never leaving the prisoner, his hands clenched tight on the gun's handle. He felt his whole body shaking with the urge to just point the damn thing right at that frakking head and pull the trigger. It would all be so quick and so easily.

But he knew about quick and easy deaths that happened so fast but then couldn't be undone later. This wasn't the time for this. He let out the breath he'd been holding and clicked the safety back on, turning awkwardly as he took two steps back to lay the gun carefully on the guard's table. Then he hammered loudly on the door, barely waiting for it to be opened before pushing blindly past the surprised marine like a drowning man gasping for air.

Laura Roslin was sleeping when he found himself in sickbay. He hadn't chosen to come here, he'd just wandered the corridors and suddenly here he was. He took a chair and sat quietly by her bed. He was trying not to wake her, but he sat down awkwardly and knocked his knee into the edge of her mattress. She stirred and opened her eyes.

'Commander Adama?' She squinted in the light, looking surprised and curious. She looked beautiful. Her hair was cascading over the pillow and it made him want to reach out and touch it. He wanted to bury his face in it, lose himself in it, breath in her scent and her softness, feel himself enfolded inside her.

"Bill?" her tone pulled his eyes up to hers.

'Laura.' His voice was rasping but he'd said it. He'd said her name.

'You're drunk,' she commented. 'Are you here to take me back to the Brig?' she gazed at him quizzically, her eyes still full of sleep.

'No.' His heart lurched when he remembered the darkness and the prisoner lying there and the gun that almost went off. He wouldn't let her go back there. That place was tainted.

Her eyes were searching his face now, 'Is anything wrong?' she touched his hand briefly and he felt a jolt as her fingers brushed the back of his hand. It was almost his undoing. The tears welled up inside him, threatening to spill out like a tidal surge.

'Bill, what is it?'

He shook his head, his defenses were blurring and his mind scattering in a chaos of tiredness and alcohol. Suddenly the hard knot in his belly turned into a racking sob. He caught the sound and tried to stifle it, the grief pounding his chest so hard that he couldn't breathe.

She sat up.

'It's Apollo, isn't it?' The words cut right through him, searing him in half. With an effort he nodded. He was broken. Shattered. He finally let his head fall onto her lap, the sobs wringing out of him.

'Oh, Bill. I'm so, so sorry.' She whispered the words over and over, holding onto him like a small child and gently stroking his head as she cradled his face in her hands. She kept him together as the grief tore him apart, ripping its way through his body and out into her lap.

Eventually he fell asleep, his arms clutched frantically around her waist and his head still leaning into her.

Hours later he woke up, still bent over the bed with his head in her lap and her arms surrounding him. She was asleep, propped up against the back of the bed. She looked so peaceful. He tried not to waken her as he gently disentangled himself from her embrace and stood up, ignoring the looks of the medical staff as he lumbered out of sickbay and back to his own quarters.


	15. Walkabout

Chapter 15

Walkabout

Day 5

Boomer was losing count of the days. Time moved through light and dark, dry heat and torrential cold. She had no idea how long they'd been here and she'd lost hope of getting them out alive. She thought she could do it for Racetrack, find a way to keep her alive until they were rescued, but that was when she thought being a Cylon had given her superhuman powers. All the fancy running and underwater stuff had evaporated with the heat from the wound in her face and now a feverish chill ran through her whole body. It was clear there wasn't going to be a rescue and it was just a matter of time before their aimless wandering would lead them back to the Cylons.

It was dark. Night time again. She was cold. They had spent the day searching for food and a place to build a shelter, scouting the area until they finally found a small stream and a tree with fruit that was good to eat. By then it was getting dark so they crawled into a stand of bushes, curling up in the little shelter it offered and hoping that whatever it was that had chased them before wouldn't find them again.

Boomer couldn't sleep. Her face hurt and she was wound up so tight that every noise or sound from the surrounding jungle jarred her nerves and put all her senses on hyper alert. Racetrack was asleep. How the hell did she do that? Racetrack seemed to be able to just lie down and fall asleep wherever they were and whatever was going on. When she'd asked her about it Racetrack had told her she did what the Sergeant in Basic had said – tell yourself you're already dead and then you don't freeze up. And you sleep. But however dead Boomer was, she still wasn't sleeping.

Without Galactica or some hope of rescue the thought of just existing here filled her with dread. Racetrack was still upbeat about it; she said that even if a Base Star had driven Galactica away, she knew they'd be back. Racetrack was convinced the fleet would settle here on Kobol, and she was content to hold onto that hope and wait for as long as it took. Maybe she was right. Kobol was the first planet they had found that was even remotely habitable, but without defeating the Cylons, how could they found a settlement here? The Cylons had defeated _them_. Surely that was obvious?

Besides, if the fleet did manage to settle here, what would happen to her?

In the light of Racetrack's crazy optimism, Boomer had held herself morosely separate, going through the motions of finding water, finding food, figuring out how to catch some edible animal without drawing attention to themselves by using their firearms. Racetrack had been enthusiastic at first, but as the day wore on she became increasingly frustrated and despondent. All their equipment was back at the Raptor. Hell, they hadn't even managed to build a fire to cook anything, and neither of them was desperate enough to eat anything raw.

She missed Helo's solid support. He had been more than a good ECO. Not that Racetrack wasn't up to the job, just that it wasn't the same. She stared into the endless dark. Helo was probably dead too. Besides, if he had been with her, no _way_ would he have stayed in the Raptor while she laid that nuke. He'd have been out there with her meeting and greeting all the lovely Sharons and realizing she was one of them. And then what? Would he have killed her? Maybe. Probably. With a shudder she realized she didn't know.

Another thing to add to the list of things she didn't know.

Like how in hell she could have been a Cylon all that time and not even known it. And even now, when she had found out (by accident – and only because she'd seen twenty identical versions of herself) she still didn't know anything more about who or what she was. Or what other Cylons were like or whether or not they would recognize her.

What bothered her was that she _should_ know. If she was really a Cylon surely she'd know what they looked like? Unless of course those things were only doled out on a need to know basis. In which case it looked like she didn't need to know anything, because as far as she was concerned she'd grown up on Picon, joined the military and was just a rookie Raptor pilot. It didn't make sense.

What worried her was that if she did meet any other Cylons here, how would she know? That smoke thing had attacked them. Shouldn't it have known that she was a Cylon and left her alone? Nothing made sense any more. She just wanted to go to sleep and leave it all behind.

By first light, Boomer was glad she could soon stop the endless crazy thoughts, get up and stop pretending that she needed to sleep like a human would. _Like a human._ Was she really making that distinction already? Was she getting used to this new version of herself that felt pain and got sick but didn't seem to need any sleep?

She must have dozed off because when she opened her eyes it was to bright, dazzling sunlight and the cold of the night had already given way to the stifling heat of the day. She groaned as she moved her head, the throbbing in her face making her wince in pain. She glanced over to where Racetrack was still fast asleep, then shook her leg, trying to rouse her, watching her roll over with a groan, pushing branches aside to sit up slowly, her eyes still full of sleep.

They both sat there groggy and tired.

'Here, have something to eat,' Boomer handed her one of the fruits they'd collected the day before. She had no idea what it was but it was sweet and tasted good.

They ate quietly for a while. Boomer's face felt so huge and swollen she could barely chew anything. She had to concentrate hard on getting each tiny mouthful into her stomach without having to move her mouth. The jungle sounds were becoming more familiar now; the constant backdrop of bird song, the occasional rustling in the leaves around them, the tinkling of the tiny brook. They'd startled her at first, but now she was getting used to them, especially the daytime sounds. In the night it all felt more threatening, but with the sun out the bird song felt almost homely.

She finished eating the fruit and closed her eyes, feeling it sitting in her empty belly. Then she realized something was wrong. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something wasn't right. Then it occurred to her: the birds had stopped singing. She glanced over at Racetrack to see if she had sensed it too, but Racetrack was obliviously tearing into the skin of another yellow fruit. Boomer caught her eye as they heard voices in the jungle to their right. They both froze. Racetrack's eyes grew wide with shock.

Boomer took a deep breath and pulled her sidearm out of its holster, watching as Racetrack did the same. Then she gestured Racetrack to circle one way while she headed towards where the voices were coming from. She moved as quietly as she could, peering through the thick leaves on the bank above the stream.

There were two of them - a man and a woman - walking towards them. Their voices were loud like they weren't making any effort at all to be quiet. As they got closer she could see that they were both filthy and their clothes were torn. The man's hair was long, he had a beard, and his face looked like he'd been beaten. The girl was thin with brown hair. They didn't look like Cylons. But then again neither did she. She could see Racetrack crouching quietly about twenty yards away, positioned so that she could cover her. Boomer hesitated, not sure whether to just follow them quietly or confront them.

00000

Laura Roslin stood outside the hatch door, composing herself. She took a nervous breath and cleared her throat. She could feel the eyes of the guard on her and she glanced over at him, catching the flicker of a smile; he obviously understood her hesitation. Adama was an imposing Commander.

But that wasn't what was bothering her. She could do imposing. She had a pretty good imposing of her own.

What was making her uneasy was that she'd seen a completely different version of him last night and it had unnerved her. She'd been in two minds whether or not to come here today. His arrival at her bedside last night had been so unexpected, so much of a turnaround - though Ishay _had_ told her that it was Adama who had brought her from the Brig to sickbay two nights ago, and that he'd stayed with her as long as he could before they'd thrown him out. He hadn't been to see her since, so she hadn't put much store by it, but last night… the memory of his racking sobs caught in her throat.

She couldn't believe that Apollo was dead, and she couldn't imagine what William Adama must be going through. As Galactica's Commander, he had no choice but to hold it together in front of his crew, and she knew just how lonely that could be. Everyone on board was his subordinate - except her, of course. As the president she outranked him, and as the deposed president she suspected her rank wasn't even an issue. Even so, something had changed last night; things were different now between them. She didn't know how or why, but something was causing her fluttering of nerves.

A short knock on the door, his barking shout to enter and there she was in his room. And now she felt even more nervous. He had his back to her, stripped to his tanks and pants, head down at the sink. His hair was wet and he had a towel slung over one shoulder. He glanced at her through the mirror.

'Ishay has discharged me from sickbay,' she cleared her throat, '– well, she said they needed the beds for real patients.' A nervous laugh. 'So… I was wondering whether my little room in the Brig is still available?'

'It's not.' His voice was hard. He carefully shifted the towel on his shoulder.

She hesitated. 'How are you doing?'

He didn't answer, but quietly soaped the brush and dipped his razor in the water.

She smiled sadly and looked around, 'It's OK, I can see I'm intruding, I'll go.'

'No. Stay,' his voice was rough, almost a whisper. He cleared his throat. 'Take a seat.'

She glanced around, searching for an available chair. The most obvious one already had a book lying on it - face down, it's pages splayed out. She picked it up, examining the cover, 'Caylus? '_Short essays on the human condition'._ I'm surprised, I didn't think this was your sort of thing.'

'It isn't. It belonged to my father. Read it. I need to hear it again.' He turned back to the mirror. She picked up the book and cleared her throat.

'_On Vengeance:_

_Act not in anger lest your son rise up from his cold sleep_

_And spit on you for what you have done.'_

She looked up in surprise. She could see him listening intently, the razor paused in mid air. She took a deep breath and carried on reading.

'_Strangle your rage _

_For the murderer before you cannot bring back your son._

_This is not an exchange – 'a life for a life'. The dead have no stomach for trade._

_You'll find no ease and your murdered son will cry from his grave, 'Why? Why kill for me?'_

_And you will answer, 'To set ME free.'_

She paused and put the book down. Caylus was so turgid. It couldn't even be classed as poetry; just the ramblings of a rather unpleasant man.

Adama was watching her through the mirror. 'Caylus was accused of murdering the man who killed his son - my father was his defense attorney. Caylus was acquitted, but wrote that five years later. My guess is that he knew what he was talking about.'

She thought for a moment. 'And you?' she waved the book at him. 'Why this, now?'

He paused, dipping the razor slowly in the water. 'Because I am too close to going into that cell and ripping that man's head from his shoulders.'

'And you think Caylus will stop you?'

'So far he has.'

She put the book down carefully, choosing her words. 'The prisoners in the Brig – you still think they're human?'

He frowned, 'Where did you hear about them? That's classified.'

She hesitated, almost flinching in advance for what she was about to say and the pain she knew it would cause him, but someone had to have a clear head in all this and she could see it wasn't going to be Commander Adama any time soon. 'Captain Apollo came by sick bay and I asked him what was going on.' She paused, then carried on without waiting for a response. 'You know Faraday has to be working for the Cylons, don't you?'

'He may be working for them, but he's not a Cylon. He's human. So I have no choice but to treat him as human.'

'You want a trial?'

She saw something inside him snap as he whipped round, 'No, I don't want a godsdamn trial. But Lee would have _demanded_ one. And I won't give him any less than that!'

'But-'

'Don't do this, Laura.'

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.

'I'll go,' she said softly.

'No,' his voice was gravel, 'Stay here. I'll get someone to fix up some quarters for you. Meantime you can wait here.' He put on his jacket and slowly did up each button. She watched his fingers struggling to complete the task. His hands were shaking. She didn't think she'd seen his hands shake before.

'And now, if you will excuse me, I have a ship to run.'

One look at him told her the last thing he needed was to go out there and face the scrutiny of every member of his crew. 'I'm sure everyone would understand if you took some time-'

'All the crew on this ship have lost someone and none of them had the luxury of hiding in their quarters.' He did up the final button on the lapel. 'Help yourself to any of the books in my collection. Oh, and don't try frakking with the minds of my crew. You got that?'

She frowned, eyeing him warily. The next few days were going to be critical for the civilian ships and the last thing they needed was the Commander going to pieces. Last night his need for her had been so unexpected – well, clearly they were going to pretend that last night hadn't happened. Maybe he didn't remember; he'd been drunk enough. She smiled thinly. 'I got it.'

He surprised her when he patted her shoulder as he went by, reaching out just enough for her to spontaneously grasp a hold of his arm, gently pulling him towards her. She'd intended to give him a reassuring hug, just something to show him that she was there and that she cared, but the moment she touched him he acted like he'd been stung. 'Don't weaken me,' he muttered, pulling away from her, 'Not today.' She took a startled step back as he turned and straightened, holding himself steady as he walked to the door.

00000

'I'm sayin' you didn't have to do it that way, Sawyer. We could have talked about it together.'

'Talked about it? When? C'mon Kate, there weren't no time for cozy chats around the camp fire. And besides, there weren't nothing to talk about. I let Karl loose because that kid was a liability. Now I know you don't like that, but that's the way it is.'

'Karl could have led us to their camp by now.'

'Yeah, and then what?'

She moved right up to him, her face barely inches away.

His breath caught and he tried to ignore the rush of hormones.

'We could have gotten Jack out.' She said, enunciating every word.

He sighed. At the thought of Jack his hormone rush quickly evaporated. 'You think they gonna let us just waltz in there and get him? What the hell planet you on? They weren't having no tea party back there Freckles. They was serious. Besides, Jack told you _not_ to go back for him-'

'I _know_ what Jack said, Sawyer. He was just saying that to protect me.'

'Yeah, 'cos it was the truth – C'mon, you go back there they shoot you. What's there to get?'

She shrugged off his question, leaving the trail to slide down the bank towards the stream.

'Karl could have told us about them,' she tossed back over her shoulder, 'Like what they were doing here, who they were. I can't believe you just let him go.'

He sighed and followed her. And yeah, she was right; he'd passed up the chance of getting some good intel from Karl for the price of saving Kate's goddamn life. But he hadn't had a choice. No kidding, the Others would have killed them both if they'd gone back there. And yeah, he'd made sure Karl took the boat so there was no way even Kate could follow him.

The girl was so damn stubborn.

'Look, I know you got feelings for Jack, but that don't make you invincible, Kate. It don't turn you into some superhero.'

She looked flustered and annoyed. More like guilty as hell because he'd called her out on it. And sure, he wasn't too happy about it himself. He wasn't exactly enjoying being the pity partner in this little threesome.

Kate had offered herself to him like the condemned man's last meal, and now that he'd lived to see another day she was feeling bad. She'd only done it because she'd thought Danny Pickett was going to shoot him in the morning. And it was good, yeah. It was good. Real good. At the time. Now he wasn't so sure. How the hell did he know she hadn't been thinking of Jack while she was making happy with him? That wasn't so good. He'd even said he loved her. Gah. And there he was thinking she loved him back. And it was Jack all the time.

Halfway over in the boat he'd realised she'd have gone back and gotten herself killed if it meant rescuing Jack. And yeah, clearly she'd chosen Jack over him – and he couldn't shake the feeling that he was just poor white trash in comparison.

She was splashing the cool water over her face, her back turned to him. He could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was really mad.

Hell, he had nothing against the guy but no way was he putting his life on the line again. He'd had enough guns pointed at his head the last two days, and he wasn't about to go looking for any more.

'How far to the camp?' he asked her. At least _that_ topic of conversation should be neutral ground. Except it wasn't because of course they were going back there without Jack.

She looked up like she was sniffing the air or something. 'About half a day from here. Maybe a bit less.' How'd she do that? He had no clue where the hell they were or where they were headed. They had walked all of yesterday, camped overnight and then headed out at dawn that morning. This island really crapped on his sense of direction, but didn't seem to bother her any.

He looked up through the trees. He let his mind drift to the beach camp; his little tent, his books, his spot against the tree where he'd read and watch the ocean. And eat. Damn, but he was hungry. They hadn't eaten in over two days. His stomach growled back at him. Damn this damn island.

She stood up, running her hands through her hair. He wanted to kiss the skin right there on the back of her neck. Now that he had felt what it was like to kiss her, _really_ kiss her…

She half turned, the water still wet on her shirt. 'You could just say sorry, you know.'

'What?' He'd need to throw himself in the cold water at this rate.

'That's all it takes, Sawyer, just one sorry and we can be friends again.'

'Sorry? What I got to be sorry for? I ain't done nothing.'

She looked at him with something bordering on distaste.

'No, sure you haven't.' She started walking again.

He was just about to say something else when a noise pulled him up short. There was something rustling in the bushes beside them. A boar perhaps? A snake? He frowned and held his breath. Then he heard it, the tell tale click of a safety coming off.

_Sonofabitch._

He spun round, ducking down and ready to hide out of sight. As he turned he could see it was too late, the gun was already pointed straight at his head.

_Well doesn't this just take the cake? _


	16. Found

Chapter 16

Found

'Put your hands in the air.'

Sawyer straightened and raised both hands slowly above his head. He glanced over at Kate. She was standing only about three feet from him so the gun had them both covered.

'Who are you?' She was light, small, couldn't weigh more than 120 pounds. Dressed in some sort of flying suit. The gun was weird; a short fat pistol thing. Looked like she knew how to use it though. His eyes flicked down to her face. Half of her right cheek was covered by a huge bandage stained dark brown and red with old and fresh blood. It looked like a pretty ugly wound under there.

'I _said_, "Who are you?"' Her voice was commanding. She packed a punch for such a skinny little package.

He shifted his eyes up to hers, trying to keep it all as calm as he could. She looked kinda jumpy. 'Name's Sawyer, and this here's Kate.' Kate shot him a quick glare – what, she wanted him to give a false name or something? Oh of course, she thought they were feds…

'Sawyer?' Bandage girl echoed his name like she was trying to pronounce it right.

'You got it. What's yours?'

He could see now that she didn't look so good. The gun was beginning to shake in her hands and the sweat was beading on her forehead. That wound looked infected and hell, he knew what that felt like.

She took a deep breath. 'What are you doing here?' Her eyes shifted over to Kate and then back to him.

He smiled, 'Standing here with a gun pointed at my head.'

'Funny,' she said without a trace of a smile.

He grinned back. 'Oceanic flight 815. We crashed here.'

'You a pilot?' Kate asked suddenly, her voice oozing suspicion. Dammit any fool could see these weren't feds – but Kate was still in a foul temper and didn't seem to care that they had another gun to their heads.

He almost groaned out loud as he saw Bandage Face stiffen, tightening her grip on the gun.

'Look, we ain't gonna hurt you.' He tried to take the focus off of Kate, and yeah, he realized when he said it that the pilot was the one holding the gun, but hell, she looked scared half out of her wits and they could all see that she wasn't in any shape to take anyone in a fight. He watched carefully as she shifted her weight slightly, blinking like she was trying to focus or something. She wasn't enjoying this much either.

'Why don't you put the gun down?' he said calmly, 'It's making me nervous,' Out of the corner of his eye he could see Kate tensed up like a cat ready to spring. At least they were finally on the same page.

'Look, our plane crashed and we got stuck here. We're trying to find a way off this island.' He kept his voice low and even, keeping her attention on him. He could see Kate watching for her move.

'How many are you?' Her eyes flicked round nervously.

_Could they take her now? Would Kate be fast enough? _

He watched her eyes carefully. 'There's just the two of us out here. The rest are at the camp 'bout forty of us - a half day's walk away,' Perhaps he should have kept quiet about the camp, but if she was one of The Others, she'd know about it anyway, and if not, well, they could do with a rescue… Besides, if she turned out to be hostile they didn't have to take her there. They could just walk her round in circles for a day, that'd give them plenty of time to get that gun off her.

There was a rustling sound and then another one of them appeared dressed in the same sort of brown flying suit. _Oh great. Tweedledum and Tweedledee._

'Looks like they're alone,' said the new one.

_Sonofabitch,_ she'd been hiding there all along, waiting to see if they had backup. Smart. Something in him ratcheted up to full alert.

'You crash too?' He asked, keeping his voice as friendly as he could, just like they were chatting in a shop queue.

Bandage-face lowered her gun slightly. He could see her figuring out if she could trust him. 'Our Raptor crashed here a few days ago,' she said finally. Sawyer breathed a sigh of relief. _Well that wasn't too bad now was it, smiley girl? _

'_Raptor?_ What's that, some kind of plane?' he asked her. He wanted to get into the position where _he _was the one asking the questions, not her.

She nodded.

The second pilot had been watching him carefully. 'So what you are doing out here?' she said, her face pinched in suspicion.

'We were took prisoner – over that way. We escaped and now we're going back to our camp.'

'Who took you prisoner?'

'We call them The Others. Don't know who they are, but they don't seem too thrilled to have us on this island.' That freaked them both out. Now they looked even more scared.

'They're not following, if that's what you're worried about.'

The new one turned to bandage-face and said quietly, 'What you think? Cylons?'

Bandage-face shrugged, but her eyes were wide with fear.

'Cylons look like us now,' the new one said. He stared at her blankly. This was clearly supposed to mean something.

'Oh,' was all he could think of to say.

'Hey,' said Bandage-face, 'how about you take us to your camp?'

It didn't look like they had much choice because she took a step back and pointed the gun at them again. 'You go first.'

'What's the matter, don't you trust us?' Hell, what was it about this island that just brought out the worst in people? He started walking, noticing how Kate took a deep breath before she stepped into line.

'So where's your plane?' Kate asked suddenly.

'About twenty clicks west of here.' said bandage face.

_Clicks? What the hell was a click?_ He decided to shelve that one for later and focus instead on the plane. 'Can it fly?' he asked.

Bandage-face ignored the question. 'How long have you been here?' she asked instead.

'Couple of months. We've been waiting for someone to come and rescue us.'

'You've been here two months? So you weren't with the fleet?' she stopped walking and he could hear a note of suspicion creeping into her voice. He hoped Kate could hear it too.

'Fleet?'

'Yeah, with Galactica.'

'What's Galactica?' Kate again. He could hear Kate straining to understand. He didn't like the turn this was taking.

'A Battlestar.'

He decided to cut in, 'That some kinda military ship?' It was a long shot, but he figured fleet, ship. Anything to stop Kate from asking any more questions. Why couldn't she wait until they were the ones holding the guns?

'If you weren't with the fleet then how'd you find this place? This is way beyond the red line – you jump away when the Cylons attacked?'

Now Sawyer had no idea what they were talking about, but these two were strung so tight he could see it wasn't going to take much before one of them snapped. And the last thing they needed was to be mistaken for something unfriendly. He cut in again before Kate could answer.

'Yeah. Something like that. Look, you got anything to eat? We've not eaten in two days-' he could see by their expression that they hadn't either.

'So you with the US military?' Kate persisted, the frown puckering her forehead. _Goddamn, but why couldn't Kate just shut the hell up?_

'Who?'

'The military, who are you with?'

'Colonial fleet,' Bandage-face said flatly, looking at Kate as if she should know all this stuff already.

'Colonial, what, that's some sort of militia?'

'No, it's the _Colonial fleet_.' Sawyer could tell by her tone that this wasn't going well. He didn't like the look the two of them exchanged either so he drew in his breath and kept the conversation light.

'We were hoping for someone to come and rescue us.'

'We got attacked,' Bandage face said simply, 'We had to leave the crash site,'

'Attacked? By who?'

'Cylons.'

'Cylons? Well, what they look like?'

'Like a big black smoke thing…'

Kate swallowed hard, 'Yeah, that thing got the pilot of our plane. You see that and you run, you hear?' They both nodded. He could tell by the look on their faces that they already had. Well, at least now they had something in common.

'So what's the chance of us getting rescued?' asked Kate.

Bandage face shrugged, 'The Beacon's with the Raptor; we waited two days, so – I don't know. Maybe the Cylons came back and Galactica couldn't send anyone.' Now that they were beginning to lower their guard he could see how exhausted they both were. Bandage face reluctantly holstered her gun, but kept a few paces behind them. Well, looked like they were who they said they were anyway – a couple of crashed pilots. At least that much made sense. The rest could wait until they reached the beach camp.

'So what's ya names then?' he turned first to bandage-face.

'I'm Boomer, that's Racetrack.'

'You serious? Boomer and Racetrack?' he tried hard not to laugh, but her serious look stifled his grin before it got any wider. They could have come up with something better than that, surely?

'They're our call signs.'

'OK, that some sort of military thing?'

She nodded, picking her way carefully through the undergrowth. Those flying suits looked warm. At least she'd had the good sense to put the gun down. Sawyer eyed it carefully, figuring out how long before he managed to get that one off of her.

They walked in silence for a couple of minutes. Sawyer was glad Kate wasn't asking any more damn fool questions. Heck, he knew as well as she did that their story didn't add up, but the smart thing was to wait until they had the backup of Sayid, Locke and Eko before asking them any more. He'd never heard of the Colonial fleet - for all he knew it was some sort of mercenary group. Their suits looked pretty fancy though, high altitude flying. Something about this pair sure didn't feel right and he didn't like it.

00000

It was quiet when Adama finally made it to CIC. He was late. He'd slept too long, taken an age to get ready and then Laura coming into his room had slowed him down even more. He was never late. Just today.

'Sit Rep,' his voice was clipped, strung too tight. He'd have to do better than that. 'Report, Mr Gaeta.'

'Nothing sir, just the Raptor crews on rotation. They haven't found anything.'

Adama nodded, steadying himself on the table as he looked up at the familiar screen, watching the Dradus blips come and go as the Raptors completed their searches and returned to Galactica. But today he didn't watch with any expectation and most of the time he didn't see the screen at all. Was this how he had imagined it to be? He guessed so. He'd been through it with Zak, and no amount of self recrimination was going to change anything. Apollo was gone for good and he'd better get used to it.

Would he feel any better if he punished himself rather than the man in the Brig? He would gladly take the fall for both his sons, but now he was the last one standing. And he didn't want to be here at all.

'Sir?'

He looked down. Some Specialist something – he couldn't remember her name - was standing in front of him with a clipboard, 'Just some F3's for you to sign, sir.'

He took the pen and scribbled his name on each sheet without even checking to see what they were.

'I'm sorry Bill, I should have stopped him. I knew he was up to something, I just…'

Adama shook his head and looked down. He was grateful that Saul took the hint and shut the frak up. He didn't want to talk about this now. Not now. Maybe not ever. He was done with dissecting the dead. He drew himself up with an effort and kept his eyes fixed on the screen above him.

Why did happiness make time go so quickly and pain drag it out for every tortured second? It didn't seem fair that way; it should be the other way round.

He stood there for what felt like an eternity watching the clock move through the minutes and the slow hours. He barely moved. It was like he'd lost the capacity for movement. He was fixed in space. Like a barnacle clinging to a rock, his eyes holding tight onto the blips on the Dradus screen. No one spoke to him. He was like a silent sentinel totally and utterly alone.

Gaeta's insistent voice snapped him out of his reverie.

'Multiple Dradus contacts!'

He should move. He should do something, but for the first time in his career he felt rooted to the spot.

'Here they come,' growled Tigh.

Adama stared at the screen, willing his body and mind to action. The Dradus monitor was covered with tiny blips. He knew he should have ordered Galactica to jump away as soon as they realized Faraday was a Cylon agent. But he hadn't been able to bring himself to give that order. It wasn't that he still hoped Lee would come back, just that it would have felt like he was the one closing the door. And he couldn't do that. And now that they had to leave, he still didn't want to go.

He kept his eyes on the screen as he heard Colonel Tigh leap into action.

'Mister Gaeta, spool up the FTL for an emergency jump, ready gun batteries 3 through 15.'

He could sense Tigh's nervous glances over at him. He could almost hear the unspoken questions; _Why aren't you moving? Why aren't you taking command? Why aren't you giving the order to jump away?_ But he didn't answer them. Saul would have to give that order. Not him.

'Sir! It was Dee, her voice loud and insistent. He had always been impressed at the way she was so soft, her voice so melodious, but when she wanted to she could make them all sit up and listen. He waited curiously for what she had to say, still feeling strangely separate from everything going on around him. Perhaps Laura had been right, perhaps he shouldn't be here today.

'Sir, I'm picking up Colonial signals.' He looked over at her, trying to make sense of what this meant. She put her hand up to her headphones, 'I – I think it's the fleet.' The whole of the CIC halted in their movements, suddenly frozen. Adama paused. Waiting.

'What do you mean 'you think it's the fleet,' growled Tigh, 'It either is or it isn't, which is it Petty Officer Dualla?'

There was a slight hesitation while she took a deep breath and then re-checked the board in front of her, 'I… It _is_ the fleet, sir.'

Apollo's voice suddenly came loud over the com, 'Galactica Actual? This is Apollo. I've found them. I found the fleet. I've brought them home.'

There was a rush of noise as the whole CIC jumped in their seats. Adama felt his knees go weak as he clutched onto the table for support. He looked around at the cheering faces of the crew, their images blurring as his eyes filled with tears. He felt Saul's arm thrown roughly around his shoulder as he handed him the mic.

'Lee?' his voice was barely above a whisper.

'Dad? They're all here! The whole godsdamn fleet.' Apollo's voice was full of strained excitement. Adama felt himself gasp. He was speechless, all he could manage was a grating, 'Welcome home, son.' He felt a slap on the back from Saul and another ragged cheer from the crew in the CIC.

Then Dee's voice took up the familiar drill; 'You're clear to land, Apollo. Come on home.' Her eyes were shining and her face was beaming.

Adama stumbled blinding out of the CIC, barely seeing the familiar corridors until he finally blundered into his quarters. Laura was still there. She turned to face him with a surprised frown. Then his arms were encircling her, his face in her hair. 'He's alive,' he breathed, squeezing her tighter, 'My boy is alive. Laura, he found the fleet.' His voice broke with pride and relief as the tears ran down his face. He pulled back, cradling her face in his hands. She smiled, the tears welling up in her eyes and spilling over, flooding him with a tenderness he hadn't felt in years. He brushed them away with his thumbs and then he leant down gently and kissed her. 'He's alive,' he whispered, pulling back and running his hand softly through her hair. 'My son is alive.'


	17. Homecoming

Chapter 17

Homecoming

Sayid rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and pushed open the tarpaulin flap. The rain had soaked half his bedding and now there was a long gash running across the roof of his makeshift shelter. He'd already fixed the damn thing a dozen times, but the pounding of the heavy rain kept tearing it to shreds. He got up quickly and dragged the sodden blankets into the sunshine before laying them out on the sand to dry.

By the position of the sun it had to be near midday. He had finally gone to sleep at dawn when the camp was beginning to stir, once he'd completed his all night vigil beside the half buried plane. The night had been quiet. Eerily quiet. He couldn't put his finger on it, but some gut instinct told him something about that plane was wrong.

He seemed to be the only one who felt that way, though, as everyone else was hanging around the camp as usual; washing, talking, eating, _chilling out_. It all looked very relaxed and peaceful. None of them seemed to be paying any attention at all to that plane, which immediately caused him a rush of anxiety. These people were incredible. They acted like they were at some exotic holiday destination. It was as if they had tuned out the constant threat they were under and chosen to conveniently ignore it. Unfortunately, now most of those who had been shielding and protecting them from it were now either captured or dead, so they might have to face the horrors of this place sooner than any of them would like. With Jack, Kate and Sawyer captured and Locke, Eko and Desmond dead, not to mention Ana and Boone – the list of those who were prepared to protect this group of survivors had shrunk right down to just two possibilities; him, and maybe Jin, who was refusing to have anything at all to do with him after Sun's near escape at the boat.

Fifty yards up the beach the silhouette of the plane was clearly visible. It was too close to the camp – so close that Sayid was quite sure it's location wasn't an accident. It could have crashed anywhere on this island, but instead it ended up digging itself into the sand no more than a spitting distance away from their camp. It couldn't be a coincidence, and the fact that the rest of the camp seemed to have lost interest in the plane so quickly was more than alarming. They were stupidly ignoring it like it was some piece of driftwood that just happened to get washed up on the beach. Couldn't they see that this was a highly sophisticated piece of military equipment? Wasn't it obvious that it had landed here intentionally?

Clearly not. And now, as he approached the plane, he could see that Charlie had hopped on top of it like a kid on a sand castle, tapping the cockpit with a stick to the beat of some tune. Charlie was totally oblivious to any potential danger, though Sayid realised that Charlie thought he was there guarding it. Sayid didn't know whether to laugh or cry at how ridiculously unaware and unprepared these people were.

Charlie was watching him, a smug sort of half smile plastered on his face. Sayid nodded at him once and then pointedly ignored him, focusing all his attention on the plane as he cautiously approached it. Someone had clearly been doing more digging while he was asleep because now most of the cockpit was showing, but there was still no sign of any door or opening. The whole thing appeared to be completely sealed.

'No sign of any door. It doesn't look like there's anyone inside.' Charlie tapped the plane one last time before he hopped off and stood beside him, his arms folded across his chest. 'So, Sayid, in your esteemed military opinion, what do you think it is?'

Sayid slowly ran his hand over the side of the plane. The sun was hot now and it felt warm to the touch, but not the warmth of metal, it was more like the even temperature of hardened resin. He moved slowly over the whole surface, examining it carefully in the bright sunlight. On one side of the cockpit, there was a hole the size of a golf ball and what looked like rust stains dribbling down from it. The hole had been filled in, but with a different sort of substance. He touched it thoughtfully, scraping his finger over and smelling it – was that a trace of some sort of adhesive? And the hole? Some sort of portal for a cable maybe? He filed that little piece of information to come back to later, and then slowly went around examining the rest of the plane. Even though most of the cockpit had been unearthed, the middle section was still inaccessible, buried deep so that only the final portion of the tail was protruding from the sand.

'So what do you think it is?' Charlie asked again, his head tilted to one side.

'It might be some kind of unmanned aircraft. It's not something I've seen before.'

'Unmanned, like some sort of spy plane or something?'

'Yes. Or an incendiary device.'

'What, you mean a bomb?' Charlie took a step backwards, 'You think this might be a bomb?'

'Well, what else could it be? There is no way in or out of it, so there is no access to any of its parts – the most obvious use for it would be as some sort of weapon. Or maybe it's a sophisticated probe. But we won't know that unless we find a way to get a look inside it.'

Charlie gazed over at the camp fifty yards away, 'Don't you think it's a little close to the camp if it's a bomb?'

Sayid sighed. He put up with Charlie, but he found his cocky attitude irritating. 'Yes, Charlie, if it is a bomb it is very near the camp.'

'Well, then shouldn't we move the camp?'

'Yes, I think we should.'

'Right then. I'll get onto it.' He glared at Sayid as he strode back down the beach, as if he thought Sayid should have told them before. As if they couldn't figure it out for themselves. Sayid shook off the irritation. He didn't blame Charlie; he'd probably despise him too if he were Charlie. He took a deep breath and continued to carefully look round the lower section of the plane, pushing away the sand to get a better view of it. It was perfectly smooth with no discernible join. This thing must have been made from a mold or something. It was probably best if they stopped digging now and didn't disturb it any further. If it was a bomb the last thing they needed was to destabilize it. Perhaps they should rebury it, that way the extra sand would give them some protection if it did explode. Either way, the first thing was to move everyone further up the beach. He stepped carefully away from the buried plane and strode back towards the camp.

00000

Commander Adama was already waiting on the flight deck as Apollo stepped out of the Raptor, pulling off his helmet and grinning from ear to ear. There was a cheer from the deck crew, their orange jump suits filling the space with color and sound. Apollo waved his arm in the air and gave a whoop as his fellow pilots cheered him. Adama smiled. Apollo deserved this; he'd earned it, and Adama had never felt so proud of his son as he did at that moment. His courage, the way the crew looked up to him…

Adama swallowed the lump in his throat. Hell, he was still drunk enough from last night for the alcohol to still be frakking with his feelings. He stood back in the crowd of pilots and deck crew, content to just be a silent observer, watching his son come home. Apollo was still grinning, but as he hopped off the bottom of the Raptor's ramp his expression froze and Apollo stopped in his tracks, his face automatically becoming a blank mask, the old defenses sliding smoothly into place as he stood in front of his Old Man.

Before either had a chance to say anything, Adama took a quick step forward and threw his arms roughly around his son's shoulders, leaning into him as he hugged him close. Apollo hesitated a beat, then he felt the answering pressure as Apollo's arms came around his back. Adama let out a long, ragged sigh. This was more than he had ever hoped for.

'You were gone over a day, what happened?' he asked, speaking softly into Apollo's ear.

'You mean why didn't I call, Dad?'

Adama stepped back, his arms still on his son's shoulders. 'Yeah, son. Why didn't you call?' he couldn't hide the pained expression on his face.

Trust Lee, trust him always to have the quick answer. But this time he didn't feel angry, he felt relief that his young, cocky son was still alive. He reached back around him and encased him in another bear hug like he'd never let him go.

'I'm sorry Dad,' he heard him whisper into his neck, 'I jumped the fleet sideways to get us away from the coordinates Faraday gave me. Then one of the ships had a faulty FTL and I couldn't leave the fleet. It just made more sense that way.'

And of course he was right. He hadn't jumped the fleet using Faraday's coordinates in case the Cylons were just slow in getting on to them. And he couldn't get Galactica to jump to the fleet because none of them knew the extent of the damage to the computer systems. And he couldn't leave the fleet either. Simple. Logical. Devastating. So _Lee._

Apollo straightened up and started to pull away, 'Well, I guess I'll go and report to the brig now.'

'No. You're done with the Brig.'

'Oh? Has the President been re-instated?'

Adama couldn't help a bitter laugh. 'Don't push it son,' he sighed, shoving away the slither of irritation and meeting his son's eyes, 'Look, you were right. I crossed a line. But so did you. And the situation with Laura Roslin is… complicated. So leave us to us work this one out in our own time, OK?'

Apollo looked confused; Adama could see him struggling to make sense of what he'd just heard. But his son was sharp enough to realize it's implications. He watched as Apollo paused and then nodded, 'Yeah, sure Dad. OK.'

Adama took step back and watched as the river of pilots flowed back towards Apollo, engulfing him before he reappeared, held aloft like a trophy as they balanced him on their shoulders and paraded him around the hanger deck. Adama smiled for the first time in days. There was hope again now. And hope was the one thing they needed; it was something none of them could afford to live without.

00000

Boomer was shivering in the heat. She knew that the wound on her face was infected, but there wasn't anything she could do about that except wonder how she'd gotten sick in the first place. She was a Cylon and that meant she was a frakking machine. Machines didn't get sick, did they? Sure, they got computer viruses, but a computer virus wasn't a real a virus- it was a bunch of corrupted files. How could she be sick?

She'd dropped to the back of the line, letting Kate take the lead, then Racetrack, Sawyer. She walked behind them all, ready to pull out her sidearm if anything tried to attack them. Not that she was in any state to react to anything. The aching in her face had spread to her whole body and she felt the fever raging through her. She was sick.

Did that mean she couldn't be a Cylon after all? She hardly dared think it, but her mind was already wrapping itself around the facts:

If she was sick she couldn't be a Cylon, she had to be human. The wound in her face was an infection, it wasn't a computer virus.

Then she tried to remember why she'd thought she was a Cylon in the first place. First off, she'd met those other Cylons on the Base Star, the ones that looked like her. But what if that had been a trick, mirrors or holograms, some technology they had used to trick her, maybe to try to stop her from arming the nuke. That made sense. OK, so seeing those other Sharons didn't make her a Cylon. She gulped down the relief. That one had been the biggie. OK, so then the breathing underwater thing? Maybe she'd imagined it, maybe she hadn't stayed under that long. And the running from the smoke Cylon? Adrenalin. Not needing sleep? Well, some people didn't need so much sleep. It varied, didn't it? And then the dreams putting the charges in the water tanks, of activating a virus on Galactica – but hell, they were nightmares, waking dreams; that was common stress symptom.

She wracked her mind for something else to add to the list, then went thought them all again. And again; each time she came to the same conclusion. How in hell had she ever thought she was a Cylon? The evidence didn't stand up. Meeting those other Sharons on the Base Star had been nothing more than a clever trick. And that smoke thing, it hadn't recognized her because she wasn't one of them. She was human after all. Finally she let herself believe it.

_I'm human after all._

_I'm human after all._

She took in a huge sucking breath and almost sang it to the trees.

_I am human!_

With a really badly infected wound. At that moment she missed the Chief to the point where it almost drove her to her knees. Suddenly she missed him more than ever. Now all the possibilities and the love and the future they had planned were gone for different reasons. She could have that life if she found him again, if they could get rescued.

She felt the first stirrings of hope. She was sick. She wasn't a Cylon. She could live after all. If she wasn't a Cylon then they needed to find the Chief, get back to Galactica...

'Hey.' The man Sawyer cut into her thoughts, 'You ok?' He had dropped back and was leaning over towards her, a concerned expression on his face.

She smiled and then flinched as she turned to face him

'That wound on your face don't look so good.' He was watching her carefully, appraising her. She wanted him to leave her alone.

'So…' he paused a moment, choosing his words, 'You the one in charge?' he nodded up to Racetrack, then looked back at her.

'Yeah. I guess.'

'You guess?' he smiled at her hesitation.

'We're the same rank, but I was the pilot. That puts me in charge.' He took in this piece of information with a grunt.

'So, this battleship of yours, you reckon they're looking for you?'

'I don't know. If they think we're alive they'll come looking for us.'

He nodded, 'But if they don't think you made it…'

She sighed. 'Yeah, or if another Base Star shows up and they can't get to us.'

'Base star?'

'Cylons.'

Another grunt. 'Right.'

She hadn't really spared much thought for how much civilians knew about the Cylons. Everyone in the military knew about Cylon Base Stars and Raiders, but she realised that if there were any survivors outside the fleet they wouldn't have come across any of them. No wonder this guy was playing dumb.

'So how'd you crash here on Kobol?' she asked him.

'Kobol?'

'Yeah, we think this is Kobol.' He took in this piece of information without comment. Perhaps he wasn't religious enough to know about the prophesies in Pythia. But everyone had heard of Kobol, right? Or maybe he thought Kobol was just a myth.

'The pilot said we were way off course and he had no clue where we were.' He said it almost to himself. She nodded. That figured. Something weird must have happened to get them here. Kobol was way over the red line, way further than any ship was designed to go. Even if it jumped straight here, they couldn't have carried enough fuel for that sort of distance.

'You're shivering,' he said suddenly, changing the subject 'You got a fever?'

She nodded. He was staring at her again.

'It looks infected." He pronounced, peering closely at the side of her face. "We got something for that back at the camp.' He paused. 'How'd you do that anyway?'

She flinched again. She didn't want to talk about this now. 'Accident,' she mumbled, hoping he'd get the message and leave her alone.

'Looks like one hell of an accident. You get that when your plane crashed?'

She shook her head. 'Cleaning my firearm,' she took a deep breath, realizing how implausible it sounded. 'It went off by mistake,' she added firmly, wondering why the hell she was telling _him_ this.

He shook his head. 'Not at that angle it didn't. Unless you put your gun in your mouth to clean it.' He raised his eyebrows at her in a question.

She stiffened, cold fear running through her. She didn't like where this was going, it was too personal, too raw, too none of his frakking business. Too much like she was giving him an angle on her.

'What's the matter, things not go so well for you on that battleship of yours?' he asked lightly.

She could feel herself curling up inside, the panic rising in her throat. She automatically looked to where Racetrack was plodding wearily behind Kate. The last thing she wanted was for Racetrack to know it hadn't been an accident. She felt ashamed.

'Its OK. I won't say nothing,' he said easily, 'Your secret's safe with me.' Then he smiled up at her, a gorgeous dimpled smile. He was smooth. She didn't trust him at all. 'Kate said it was only a half hour or so now.' He continued, You think you can do that?'

She took a deep breath, then gave a slight nod.

Another grunt. 'Damn I'm hungry. I tell ya, when we get back to the camp I'll be eating the whole damn kitchen.'

She felt another a sudden wave of relief; they were going to a camp with food and medicine. All that frakked up mess that had happened on Galactica hadn't been because she was a Cylon; it had been because of stress, nothing more. She wasn't a Cylon, she was one of them. She could go home after all - if Galactica ever found them. She felt the familiar ache as she realized she might never see the Chief again. Things were better, but they still had a long way to go.


	18. Girl Power

Chapter 18

Girl Power

'Beach is just over there, couple of hundred yards.' Kate motioned wearily past a stand of trees.

Sawyer could see she was fit to drop, the last few days were finally catching up with her.

'I'll take you in,' he said to the two pilots, 'but go easy on the gun toting, OK? There's a couple of folk there won't appreciate you pointing no guns at them. Now we's all friendly long as you are, you get that?' they nodded solemnly, their faces nothing but wide eyes. He gave them an encouraging half smile before he took a deep breath and led them slowly towards the beach.

He'd gotten to know the two pilots a bit more over the last couple of hours. They seemed like nice girls; hungry, tired as hell, and the one with bandage was about to get real sick if they didn't get some antibiotics down her soon, but apart from that they seemed OK. Genuine enough – so long as you didn't ask them anything about who they were or how they'd ended up on the island. He'd purposefully kept it light, done most of the talking, hadn't asked any probing questions. That would come later when Sayid, Locke and the others could give him some backup. Besides, he just wanted to get some food down him. Anything else was going to have to wait.

As they rounded the shore, Sawyer could see the little camp just as he'd left it. It seemed kind of peaceful, like some weird holiday camp. Ironic as they all knew it was only yards away from the menacing threat of the jungle. For a second or so the idyllic scene played out like some cutesy TV show. There they all were; Claire was rocking Aaron in his cradle, Charlie talking earnestly to someone - he didn't know their name - Sayid behind him, acting all antsy and guarded as Hurley waved his arms at him like he was telling a funny story or something, Rose was washing some clothes, and – Hurley turned from Sayid and stared right at him, open mouthed, like he was seeing a ghost or something. With a whoop he left Sayid mid wave and started running toward them, his huge bulk swaying beneath his T-shirt

'Sawyer! Kate!' he threw his arms round both of them at once, squeezing hard and knocking them backwards with so much force that Sawyer had to brace himself to stop them all from falling back in the sand. In spite of himself he couldn't help but laugh.

'Man, I've missed you!' Hurley gushed between them, pulling back to get a look at them both, 'Wow, Dude, you OK?' he squinted at Sawyer's face, concern written all over him. Hell, if he thought his face looked bad he should see the bruises over his ribs. But yeah, they must look pretty beat up – well, he was anyway…

'Where's Jack?' Hurley was scanning the beach behind them, his eyes opening wide with surprise as he spotted the two women following them. Sawyer turned to follow his gaze; Boomer and Racetrack were standing quietly about ten feet behind them, looking nervous and wary.

'They still got Jack.' He said flatly, careful to ignore Kate's look. 'But we found us a couple of pilots,' he turned to Boomer and Racetrack and beckoned them forward, trying to dredge up some enthusiasm through his exhaustion and hunger – he didn't want them freaking and pulling those guns on anyone. A shoot-out wasn't on his _to do_ list for their welcome home party.

By now there was a crowd gathering around them. He could hear the eager expectation in their voices, the hope of rescue that the newcomers had brought with them.

It was OK. The first tricky bit was over, next was to eat, get the guns off of them and then get some answers. The crowd parted a little so he could see the two pilots again; they were standing in the middle of the camp looking completely lost. Boomer seemed like she was having trouble even staying upright. He was about to go over and tell her to sit the hell down when Rose came forward, clucking like a mother hen. 'You two girls look all in. Hey, give us some space here!' Everyone obediently shuffled aside. 'And you too, Kate, you look wrecked, honey. Let's get y'all some food and water and sit you down.' Sawyer raised an eyebrow. OK, some things _had_ changed, Momma Hen was ruling the roost. He could see Sayid hovering at the edge of the group, suspicion written all over his face.

Sawyer watched quietly as Rose shepherded the two pilots towards the kitchen, keeping up a motherly string of sentences that meant practically nothing but he was sure had the effect of making them either feel smothered or cared for. He knew which way he would go with it, but the two girls just seemed relieved.

'Well?' Sayid had appeared by his side. 'Who are they?' He nodded to the two women.

Sawyer shrugged. 'Boomer and Racetrack. Plane crashed. Pretty jumpy overall, but I don't think they mean us no harm.'

'_Call signs?_ Who are they with, the US military?'

'Now _that_ I don't know, some Colonial militia, or something.'

'What kind of plane did they come in?'

'Don't know, didn't see it, caught them wandering round the jungle this morning. But it looks like they want to be rescued just as bad as we do. Now you're gonna have to hold on the third degree 'cos I'm going to got over there and eat something.' Sawyer ignored Sayid's look as he pushed past him to the kitchen. Sayid annoyed the hell out of him. He didn't like being near him and he sure as hell didn't like talking to him. Though he did have his uses – provided you had the need for an Iraqi torturer – though it seemed to him that once he got started on it Sayid didn't know when to stop.

'Hey Dude, you've no idea. Just… cool. Good to see ya.' Hurley slapped him on the back so hard the food nearly shot out of his mouth.

'Hey, I ain't eaten in two days, give it a chance to get down there, huh?'

'Sorry, it's just, well, when I had to leave you all and The Others said not to go back and we didn't know if we'd see you all again… you know?'

'Yeah. It's good to see you too, Megatron.' He let out a contented sigh. It _was_ good to be back. He checked over to where the new pilots were already sat down with a plate of food. Rose was standing protectively over them. 'So she in charge now?' he gestured over to Rose.

'No, we're a democracy,' said Hurley proudly. 'We decide things together.'

'A democracy? Here? How's that gonna work?'

'Well, we share stuff and we all decide what to do. It's cool.'

Sawyer couldn't help but smile. He wondered how Locke was taking it. Wasn't exactly his style. He scanned the camp looking for him. No sign. Maybe he'd gone off to be wild man of the woods on his own. 'Where's Locke and Eko?' He took another mouthful. _Damn_ that tasted good.

Hurley shuffled his feet in the sand. 'Dude, they didn't make it. The hatch exploded and they got caught in it – Desmond too.'

'What, they'd dead?'

'Yeah, man. They're dead.'

_Crap. _ Though he couldn't say he was going to miss any of them. He hadn't really seen much of Desmond, but Eko had been a scary crazy-assed son of a bitch and Locke, well, Locke was certifiable. 'Anything else gone on I should know about?'

Hurley pointed over to the beach ahead of them, 'Just that some plane thing crashed last night.'

'Yeah,' Charlie grinned over from the other side of the table, 'Sayid thinks it's a bomb.' He nodded conspiratorially. 'We _were_ going to move the camp, then you lot turned up.'

'A bomb?' Sawyer squinted over to where Hurley was pointing. He could see it now, a grey shape sticking out of the beach about fifty yards away. It looked like a small jet or something. Most of it was completely buried with only the tail section jutting out of the sand. He could see how the sand was pushed away around the cockpit where they'd obviously been trying to dig it out. Someone had been busy.

'No door,' added Charlie. 'Sayid reckons it's some kind of _incendiary device_.' He emphasized the words, making it clear that he thought Sayid was overreacting. Sawyer glanced over at Sayid. Yeah, of course Sayid would think it was a bomb, the guy saw danger everywhere. Though he had to admit, so far he'd been right every time. He watched as Sayid tried to get near the new pilots. Looked like Rose wasn't having much of it. She was fussing over the new girls like they were a pair of half-drowned kittens. They did have that look about them; they both sure were in need of some mothering.

It felt weird to be back. Good weird - like this was his new benchmark for normal. It beat the hell out of someone knocking the crap out of him or putting a gun to his head every five minutes.

So here they were, back safe and sound, though Kate still didn't seem so impressed to be back. She hadn't said a word to him since they picked up the pilots hours ago. He could see her at the far side of the kitchen area tucking into some food. She had her back to him. He wasn't forgiven, then. He took a long swig of water and grabbed his plate, pushing his way to where Sayid was remonstrating with Rose.

'… I don't think you are aware of the possible danger-'

'Look, honey, I appreciate all you've done, but right now these two girls just need to get a bite to eat and some water, so you just leave them alone for a while. That thing ain't going nowhere for the next ten minutes.'

'Look if it _is_ a bomb we need to know, preferably before it explodes. _And_ we have to move the camp.'

'I ain't moving nowhere. Look, you just calm down. That thing ain't gonna go off in the next ten minutes.'

Sayid gave an exasperated sigh.

Sawyer smiled admiringly at Rose. _Damn_, but Sayid just met his match. There's a thing. Boomer and Racetrack were sitting with their backs to a tree eating and drinking with one eye on their food and another on Sayid. They looked more comfortable now, sitting inside Rose's little circle of protection. He hadn't realized Rose had it in her. But Sayid was right. If that damn thing was a bomb they needed to know ASAP.

'OK, OK,' Sawyer pushed his way through the throng and strode up to where Boomer was sitting.

'Hey,' he said quickly. Boomer looked up, 'You seen one of them before?' Rose opened her mouth to object, but Boomer was already straining round trying to see where he was pointing. She pushed herself up slowly and her gaze followed his arm towards the buried plane. Then she nearly dropped her plate, her mouth open in shock. Ok, so it looked like she knew what it was.

'What is it? You've seen one of them before?' Sayid moved quickly around Rose's imposing bulk.

'_Frak_.' Was all she said. Racetrack looked up expectantly.

'It's a Raider,' she whispered, her eyes open with fright.

'What?' Racetrack was on her feet in a second. 'Oh my gods.'

'I take it that's not good?' Sawyer looked from the two women back to the half buried plane.

'Do you think it's dead?' Racetrack asked.

'_Dead_?' Sawyer asked, 'What, we talking about the same thing here?'

'She means inactive,' said Sayid impatiently.

'No.' Racetrack shook her head, 'I mean _dead._ Those things fly themselves.'

Sayid looked confused for a second, then recovered, 'So it's a probe? There was no door. We didn't think there was anyone inside.' Sawyer noticed how Sayid was ignoring the _dead_ thing.

Boomer swallowed hard.

'I thought it might be some incendiary device,' Sayid offered.

Boomer shook her head slowly. 'No. It's probably armed though.'

'Is it one of yours?' Sayid's lip started to curl. Not a good sign. Sayid and the lip curl meant he was about to turn mean.

'No. It's Cylon,' Boomer said, taking a deep breath. 'I guess we need to check it out.' Her voice sounded flat and expressionless, but Sawyer realized she was beyond scared.

'Alrighty,' he said lightly, 'Let's check out the dead plane.'

'Dead plane?' Charlie was grinning too. 'It's not a bomb then?' He looked at Sayid and raised his eyebrows mischievously, ignoring the death glare that Sayid shot at him.

Boomer swallowed hard and pulled out her gun, taking another deep breath before she started walking. Racetrack followed a little behind and both women approached the plane slowly.

'So, what do you know about this thing?' Sayid caught up with them, following Boomer's example as he pulled a handgun out of the back of his pants.

'It's a Cylon Raider,' Boomer said quietly, 'the Cylon equivalent of a Viper.'

'Viper?'

'Yeah. A fighter plane.'

She took another deep breath as they reached the crash site and raised her gun, pointing it at the buried plane as she circled slowly. Sawyer stood with Racetrack a little ways off, watching closely. Racetrack made no move to go any closer and Sawyer noticed she wasn't even pointing her gun at it, but holding it loosely by her side.

'Ain't you gonna shoot it too?' he asked her curiously.

'No point. The bullet would just bounce off. You'd need a high caliber round to even make a dent. If that thing wanted to turn and fire on us, there's not much we could do about it.'

_Mmmm. Good to know_.

He watched as Boomer circled round the plane, edging forward as if it was going to jump up and bite her any moment. She circled around to the side of the cockpit and then paused, tilting her head to one side before she slowly lowered her weapon. She was standing on the far side of the plane now, its bulk between them so he couldn't see what it was she was looking at, but Sawyer watched as she leant forward and touched the cockpit in front of her. Her expression had changed from fear to concern. She frowned, then her hand went to her own face and she brushed the bandage with her fingers.

_What the-?_ Sawyer moved round to see what she was staring at.

'It's hurt,' she said softly. He moved in next to her, looking down to see a neat round hole on the side of the cockpit.

'See the blood?' she traced the reddish stain. It looked like she was in some kind of trance. And then she realized that everyone was watching her. She looked up, dazed, then something clicked inside her. 'It's Starbuck's Raider,' she said, heaving in a deep breath. 'Oh gods, it's Starbuck! We have to get her out!'

'Hey, hold on a minute Pinky, you mean there's someone in here?'

'Yeah, this is Starbuck's.' She was looking round frantically, 'How long has this been here?'

'It crashed here last night.' Sayid stepped towards her.

'Oh gods,' She swallowed her breath, 'One of our pilots is inside this plane. We have to get her out.'

'I thought you said it was unmanned,' Sayid's voice was tight with suspicion.

'Not this one.'

'So where's the door, then?' asked Charlie.

'Down here,' she rounded the plane and pointed down to where the side of the plane was still covered in sand.

'OK, so I guess we start diggin'.' Sawyer bent down, grabbing one of the makeshift spades still stuck in the sand next to the cockpit. Racetrack was already beside him. He could see Boomer doing her best to help, but that girl was sick. 'Hey,' he said sharply to her. She looked up. 'You go get yourself back to Rose. Get that face looked at. Me and Racetrack got it here, OK?'

She hesitated, then nodded.

'Hey Boomer, I'll get you back.' Hurley smiled at her, nodded to Sawyer, then took her gently by the arm and led her back along the beach.

Sawyer could hear Sayid huffing in disapproval. Guess he was just itching to torture some information out of them. Too bad Rose was in charge now. He wasn't sure why, but he felt protective of these two, partly because they were the best chance he'd seen yet of getting off this island and partly because, hell, there was just something about them that brought it out of him.

When he turned his attention back to the plane, Racetrack was already scraping away at the sand.

'This pilot's a 'she' you say? You got any men in your girl's army?'

She smiled and a wistful expression came over her face. 'Plenty. Now help me dig.' He grinned back at her. Hell, if they were all as fine looking as these two that had to be some army.

It took them over an hour to get to the doorway and dig a hole big enough to get someone into it. Eventually they'd uncovered enough sand for Racetrack to slide in and try to get it open. She pressed down hard on some black button thing sticking out from the side. A panel slid silently open and he leant down to peer over Racetrack's shoulder. He saw Racetrack gag two seconds before the smell hit him – a combination of rotten flesh and latrines. It was completely overpowering. Racetrack stepped back, pushing him backwards and holding her hands over her face. She scrambled out of the hole and vomited into the bushes.

_Sonofabitch, but that smelled bad._

'What's in there?' Charlie was grimacing with distaste.

'A rotting corpse by the smell of it,' said Sayid blankly. 'So who's going to get it out?'

Sawyer nodded. 'I'll do it.' Somehow he felt he owed it to the two women to at least get their fellow pilot out of there and give her a decent burial. He took a deep breath and then pushed himself down into the hole. Even with one hand over his face the stench inside made him retch. He turned his head away, took another breath and peered inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark and even then he couldn't see much, but he was sure he could make out something that looked like a foot – yes, there was someone in here. And also meat, lots of red decomposing meat hanging from the ceiling. Like a butcher's freezer with the power turned off. _Creepy._

'I got it.' he shouted back, taking more air in. He carefully untangled one foot from some sinewy thing and grabbed the other leg, turning his face away from the stench before he pulled hard, dragging the pilot's body out of the hole. Sayid leant down next to him, helping him haul the legs, then the torso and finally supporting the head as they dragged the whole thing onto the beach. Sawyer climbed out to see that Sayid had already laid the body on the sand. It didn't look rotten. The smell was coming from all the meat in that plane.

'Is she alive?' Racetrack was standing a little ways off, still holding her hand over her nose.

'Yes, she's still breathing.' Sayid sat back on his heels, surprise etched on his face. There was an audible sigh from the group of diggers. Sawyer stepped forward and put his arms gently under the girl. With a grunt he stood and lifted her up. She was young, a shock of blond hair, full lips. Hell, where did they get their pilots from? Her breathing was shallow, her hands hanging limp by her sides as he carried her slowly to the camp. She was out cold and the smell coming off of her was just awful. He grimaced, making a mental note to wash once he'd got her under shelter. What the hell was she doing in there anyway? Meat delivery?


	19. Dead Meat

Chapter 19

Dead Meat

'So are you going to tell me?' Adama's gaze was steady. It was the same look he had when he was facing down a Cylon attack. She knew exactly what he was referring to, and that this conversation was long overdue, but that didn't mean she liked it or that she wanted to talk about this right now. Or ever. She feigned ignorance, trying to put off the moment as long as possible.

'Tell you what?' She pretended to be fascinated by a small stain in the corner of her shirt; it was never going to come out. Trying to manage with just the clothes she'd brought with her for the decommissioning ceremony was proving increasingly difficult. And this stain was particularly stubborn. Like William Adama.

'Tell me why you're taking the Chamalla.' He said quietly.

She looked him full in the eye and kept her voice as steady as she could. There was no way to avoid it now. She'd have to tell him. She took a deep breath and didn't let go of his eyes. 'Bill, I have cancer. It's too far advanced for any surgery and the Chamalla is palliative.' There. It was done. She watched him carefully. He didn't even flinch.

He nodded quietly. 'And there's no other treatment?'

'Only Doloxan, which would leave me completely incapacitated and unable to function as President.' He looked away then. She could see him delicately picking through something in his mind. It wasn't like him to choose his words so carefully. She braced herself for what was coming next.

'Laura, I can't allow you to remain as President while you're taking a psychotropic drug like Chamalla.'

'You can't _allow_?' she echoed sharply. 'Since when was it up to you?'

His look carried a depth of infinite patience, but he still sighed. Of course they both knew it _was_ up to him. If she was mentally unfit to carry out her duties as president then he simply had to go to the Quorum of Twelve and her time in office would be over. And then the well being of the fleet would rest in the hands of the Vice President, Dr Gaius Baltar. She was quite sure that neither of them wanted that.

'You want Baltar to take over? Is that what you want?' It was a ridiculously weak and petulant move to make, but she was angry now. She could see how deftly he had boxed her in.

'No. I want you to get some proper treatment and fight this thing.'

'That's what you've decided for me?'

He sighed. 'No. It's your choice. But those are the conditions.'

She smoothed her hands down the sides of her skirt. 'I'll think about it.'

'Well, think fast, because the Quorum of twelve are breathing down my neck and Tom Zarek is stirring them all up.'

'Oh, that man…' she looked down, picking the stain on her shirt. The Cylons nuke their home world and now she didn't have enough shirts to wear. She glanced up. He was watching her with a softness that was incongruent with the force of his words. And of course he was right. It was almost like his look was holding onto something in her that she'd let go of, some strength or clarity that she'd allowed to go out of focus. His look said he cared and she felt her anger slowly evaporating.

'You knew already, didn't you?' she asked quietly, meeting his gaze again.

'I wanted you to tell me yourself.'

'Doc Cottle had no right-'

'Doc Cottle had every right. It is his duty to inform me if the President is mentally unfit. He should have told me before, it would have saved us both a lot of trouble.'

'You mean you would have taken me out before I sent Lieutenant Thrace to almost certain death?'

She saw the pain in his eyes and immediately wished she hadn't said it. 'I'm sorry, that was-'

'No,' he cleared his throat, 'But you're right. I would have taken action earlier, yes. But what's done is done. How about we just start from where we are now?' He stood up stiffly. 'You have a decision to make.'

00000

Sawyer laid the unconscious woman down in Sun and Jin's tent. She was blond, pretty looking, dressed in military fatigues - green jacket, army issue tank and pants, dog tag. He reached down and peered at the shiny metal disc hung round her neck. It said 'K. Thrace' then a number. Sawyer took a step back and gave her an admiring smirk, ignoring Sun's roll of the eyes as she took over, expertly checking to see if there were any obvious injuries. The women sure had taken over the camp. Oh well, it would make their new female military wing feel right at home.

'Well?' he asked Sun once she'd straightened up, 'What's wrong with her?'

Sun shook her head, 'Nothing that I can see. But I'm not a doctor.' No of course she wasn't. _Jack_ was the doctor. And _Jack_ wasn't here. He glanced over to where Kate was sitting. She hadn't moved to help them with the pilot or the plane, she'd just sat at the edge of the beach, eating slowly and watching them with a faraway look in her eyes. No prizes for guessing what she was thinking about. Or that she was pissed with him because Jack was still captured. Hell, it wasn't his fault, so she should quit blaming him. He gave her a wide berth to his tent, nodding a smile at Boomer and Racetrack, now laid out resting from the heat. They seemed too exhausted to show much concern about the new pilot – what had they called her? _Starbuck_? They sure picked them. At least he had a gun now; so things were looking up. He felt kind of naked in this place without one.

He sat inside his tent, looking round it with a satisfied sigh. Just a short nap and then, once everyone else had stopped watching him like he was some kind of spook come back from the dead, he'd break open his stash and get himself a drink. But before he even had a chance to stretch himself out a shadow crossed the opening and made him squint into the light. _Sayid_. He groaned.

'The gun.' Sayid said flatly, 'Of the injured pilot. Do you have it?'

'What, you mean the one with the hole in her face or the one-'

'Do you have the gun?'

'Yeah. I got it.'

'May I have a look at it?'

'Oh yeah.' Sawyer started laughing, 'No. You can't.'

'I just want to look at it. It's not something I've seen before.' Well, look at this, Sayid sounding almost reasonable.

'So go and ask one of the other gals if you can take a look at theirs, I'm sure they'd be just thrilled.' Sayid's irritated expression made him smile wider.'What, you mean Momma Rose won't let you near them? Listen Sinbad, we're in a Matriarchal society now. If you're lucky, before too long they'll need you for breedin'.' And with a grin he lay back down on his mattress, keeping a careful watch on Sayid under his half closed eyelids.

'Listen Sawyer,' Sayid hissed, 'I don't know who you think these people are, but they're not US military. And if you'd taken a good look inside that plane, well, I suggest you do.'

'I seen what's inside it…'

'And you're not concerned?'

'Well, hell, what is there to be _concerned _about?'

'If you didn't see anything to be concerned about then I suggest you take a closer look.'

Sayid stepped back, and there was enough of a sense of urgency in his voice to make Sawyer get up with an inflated sigh and gesture expansively to Sayid to lead the way. The inside of the plane had mostly been hidden when he'd dragged out the pilot, but yeah, all that meat hanging down had been kind of weird, but he'd been so damn tired he'd pushed it to the back of his mind and let someone else figure it out. Like Sayid. Why couldn't Sayid go poking around there with his stick up his ass without dragging him along too?

He followed Sayid up the beach to the plane, feeling the irritation growing with every step. There was always something on this damn Island, and recently all he'd wanted was to sit down on the beach with a beer and a book. Was that really too much to ask? Sayid pulled a flashlight out from the back of his pants and shone it right inside the plane.

'Where'd you get that?' Sawyer asked approvingly.

'From the hatch. I thought it might come in useful.' Sayid pointed the beam inside, stepping back so Sawyer could get a clearer look.

Sawyer leaned down, holding his hand over his face to disguise the smell. He peered in, holding his hand up for Sayid to pass him the flashlight. He crouched lower, pulling himself up inside the cockpit and shining the light around inside.

'What the-?' As Sawyer shone the beam around he could see what looked like body parts filling the whole inside of the plane – hell, the body parts _were_ the inside of the plane; sinews, blood, muscle, and of course the overpowering stench he'd been faced with earlier. He felt himself retch and pulled back quickly. 'What do you think all the meat's for?'

Sayid shrugged, 'What did one of the pilots say, '_It flies itself_.'?'

'You're kidding me.' Sawyer leant in for another look. He hated to admit it, but Sayid might be right. He straightened again. 'What, you telling me this _goo_ is the pilot?'

'That's exactly what I'm saying.'

Sawyer shook his head in disbelief. 'You think this thing was really _alive_?'

Sayid didn't say anything, just watched as Sawyer swallowed hard and took another look. The whole of the inside of the plane was lined with some sort of fleshy fibrous stuff. He poked it. It didn't move, but it felt solid, like a huge wall of muscle. He pulled out of the plane again._ '_So what do you think it is? Some sort of weird bio-technology?'

'It's not something I've come across before, but I suggest we ask the two people who clearly _do_ know.'

Sawyer nodded. For once he agreed with Sayid. This was beyond weird. Now he got what they meant when they'd asked if it was dead. They really meant _dead._

'Hey, what's all the excitement?' Charlie hopped into the hole and held up his hand for the flashlight, 'Smells pretty ripe, huh?' he crouched inside, 'Bloody hell. Is it alive? Hey, Hurley, take a look at this.'

Hurley shone the light into the plane and whistled. 'Dude, it's like, well, you know, _Flight of the Navigator_ or something, you know where that plane was alive?'

Sawyer shook his head. 'Yeah, but there ain't no kid inside having a nice time. Just sleeping beauty over there who stinks like a latrine.'

'I'd say it was more like an open sewer,' said Charlie with a grin. 'So, what are you going to do then?' Sawyer could have sworn that Charlie was enjoying this. What, was he bored or something? How about he went on a trek across the Island to meet some Others, _that_ would give him something to do.

'Well, I think it's time we asked _them_.' Sayid strode purposefully to the two pilots. They looked like they were fast asleep now. Sawyer couldn't help feeling sorry for them. Rose was right, they just needed a good meal and a rest. Reluctantly he followed Sayid and stood at his shoulder as he shook the two women awake.

Racetrack groaned and covered her face with her arm, blinking at him in the bright light.

'That plane,' said Sayid without any preamble. 'Is it alive?'

'Has it moved?' Racetrack sat up, startled.

'So you believe it _is_ alive.'

'I frakking hope not.' She stood up and looked over at the plane, 'Starbuck got it flying, but the thing was dead.'

'Since when were there living planes?' Charlie asked.

'Since the Cylon's made them.'

'Cylons?'

'The ones who captured your friends - you call them _The Others_ – we think they're Cylons.'

'I didn't know they were capable of this,' Sayid muttered, looking anxiously over at the half buried plane.

'Nor did we.' Racetrack shuddered, 'It's pretty scary, huh?'

Sawyer nodded, 'That kid, Karl, the one we escaped with, he said they did experiments and stuff on that smaller Island – the one they took us to.'

Hurley was shaking his head, 'It's gross, man. Like… really gross.'

'Yeah.' Racetrack looked up at Hurley. 'It is.'

Sayid had been watching the plane thoughtfully. 'So what do we do?'

Boomer had been quiet through most of the conversation. Sawyer wasn't surprised; her face didn't look so good. She had a clean bandage on it now, but it still looked red and swollen. It must hurt pretty bad.

'I think we should wait and see if Starbuck wakes up,' she said, 'Our best chance is for her to get the Raider flying and then she can go back to Galactica and get help.'

'Galactica? That's your ship?' Sayid asked her.

'Yeah.'

'And you arrived on a different plane? So where is it?'

'It's wrapped around a tree out there somewhere,' she waved in the vague direction of the jungle. 'It'll never fly. We were attacked – I don't think it's safe to go back there.'

Sayid looked back at the buried Raider, 'So we're just left with this one then. And if Starbuck doesn't wake up, can you fly that plane?'

She looked pretty sick at the thought. 'No. Starbuck was the only one who could get it moving… '

'Well, let's hope it won't come to that then.' Sayid glanced over at Sun's tent where Starbuck was lying unconscious. 'For now then I suppose we just wait.'

00000

Desmond lay on his back and stared at the ceiling.

He'd been in prison before.

_He could do this_.

He'd been on that small boat for months.

_He could do this_.

He'd been in the hatch for three years.

_He could do this._

He knew they weren't on a ship because there wasn't any movement; they were completely stationary. He knew that they weren't on a _space_ ship because that was insane. He suspected they were in another hatch on the Island and that everything else was a pack of lies.

He'd been in this cell two nights now – as far as he could tell anyway. The guard had dimmed the lights twice, mimicking night, and then turned them up again. So that made this day two. So far they'd left him alone during the day, saving whatever it was they had planned for the nights. The first night Laura had lost her mind, the second, well, Commander Adama had come into their prison and threatened to shoot them, banging his way into the cell and standing there pointing a gun at Faraday's sleeping form. Desmond had lain there awake, eyes half open, smelling the potent scent of spirits on Adama's breath. He hadn't been afraid. He hadn't even cared that he was about to die. The room had filled with the smell of alcohol and he'd just wanted a drink.

It had gone on a long time; the Commander standing there breathing out alcohol fumes, Desmond lying there waiting for something to happen. He'd lost hope of getting out of there alive anyway, and at least this way it would have been quick and clean. He'd been half way through praying to whatever God he had left to take him when Adama had abruptly left the room and the guard had returned. So that was the game. Commander Adama's version of Russian Roulette. They were playing to bigger stakes in this hatch. Being manipulated into pressing that button every one hundred and eight minutes was positively benign compared to this.

He wondered what they had planned for that night. He didn't want to give them the satisfaction of getting a reaction out of him. The question was: did he want to be awake and alert for the night ahead or demonstrate his indifference by sleeping through whatever it was they were going to throw at him? Or maybe they hadn't planned anything, maybe the last two nights had created an expectation for action that wouldn't be fulfilled. He shouldn't care either way. No expectations. No hopes. He was a blank slate. He would remain aloof, unruffled, unaffected. He was the observer, not the observed.

But the boredom of his new approach stretched out endlessly. There was nothing to do, nothing to read. By refusing any sort of interaction he had imprisoned himself in his own mind. Faraday broke the monotony by trying to get a reaction out of him every hour or so, but he ignored him. He didn't want to hear any more about space ships and space-time. No more of Faraday's earnest craziness. He refused to even hear the words. Instead he lay there alone with his own thoughts. Slowly, piece by piece, he went though every single memory he had of his life with Penny, re-living it to the tiniest detail. He strung out each scene, each touch, each word, frustrated when he couldn't remember exactly what she'd said or the inflection of her voice. After a while her face began to blur and she morphed into some strange caricature of herself until eventually he'd twisted her into something so unreal that it hurt to even think about it. That was worse - and then he wished he'd played chess in his head instead. Finally he gave up and let the despair and hopelessness take over until all he could do was lie there waiting for his body, his muscles, to atrophy, feeling himself falling into oblivion.


	20. Moving On

Chapter 20

Moving On

'So what happened to my stash?'

'Dude, I told you, this is a democracy now, we share it all.'

'You've stolen my stuff!'

'Hey, it wasn't your stuff to steal. Now chill, we've got a good vibe going here.'

'Vibe my ass. That was my property and I want it back.'

'Dude, it wasn't yours in the first place - you just, like, took it, you know?'

'Yeah, you stole it in the first place and we just _took it _back,' added Charlie.

Sawyer shook his head in disbelief.

Hurley shifted uncomfortably. 'But hey, you know, you can still _use_ your stuff – it's over there on a shelf in the kitchen. What's left of it, anyway.'

Sawyer almost growled in exasperation. 'I'm gone five minutes and…'

'Dude, it was more like a week. And we didn't know if you were even coming back.'

'Fine, whatever. I'll go look at the _shelf_ then.' Sawyer started walking to the kitchen area. He wanted a beer. Now. He hoped they hadn't drunk it all or he was going to lose any cool he had left. He glanced over to where Boomer and Racetrack were resting next to Sun's tent. They looked all out. 'Hey, those two asleep?'

'Yeah,' said Hurley, pausing to watch the two women for a moment.

'You think they'll get us rescued?' asked Charlie.

Sawyer shrugged, opening a can of beer with a satisfying crack. 'Let's just hope that whoever comes for them is friendly.'

Hurley looked over at them with a puzzled frown.

'Whatever they are, they ain't US military,' Sawyer clarified.

'Oh.' There was silence for a moment. 'Well, they seem really nice,' finished Hurley.

'Oh come on Megatron, you think everybody's _nice_. That don't mean _nothing_.'

'I guess they _are_ kinda wound up about this Cylon thing,' Hurley acknowledged, 'but they seem OK.'

Charlie grinned. 'They're like something out of MASH.'

'Yeah, but the difference is, they ain't playin' doctors and nurses,' said Sawyer, squinting his eyes and looking over to where the pilots were resting.

'But you wish they were, don't you Sawyer?'

He shook his head wearily as Charlie and Hurley both started laughing.

'Oh come on, Sawyer, we've got eyes.'

'Well.' Sawyer stood up, 'I think I'll just hit the hay. I can't take any more of this _vibe_.' He smiled as he got up. Charlie and Hurley seemed more relaxed with him than they'd ever been. He realised he quite liked it. He definitely liked it without St Jack riding around on his high horse. And Kate… he stopped in his tracks, turning back to the kitchen, 'Any of you seen Kate?'

'Yeah, she went off this afternoon. I thought she was getting some boar or something. I dunno.' Charlie shrugged.

'She said she was going for help.' Sayid said flatly.

'Help? What kind of help?'

'I don't know. That's what she said.'

'But-' damn, where was she? Don't say she's gone after Jack again. 'Hey, Hurley, you tell her anything about where their camp was?'

'I just said it was North.'

'You just said it was _North_?' He looked at Hurley as if it was a crime.

'Yeah. I just said North, so what?'

'So she's gone back after Jack, that's what.'

'Oh.' Hurley finally got it and looked suitably chagrined.

'I thought of going with her,' said Sayid, 'But I decided we had more pressing concerns here.'

'Dude, I wouldn't like to be alone out there.'

'Oh, Kate can look after herself. I'm sure she'll be fine.' Charlie looked up with an insufferable smile.

'Well, there's nothing we can do about it now. And there's no one here who can track her, so…' Sayid turned away.

Sawyer sighed in exasperation and walked smartly towards his tent. Once inside he grabbed a back pack and started stuffing a shirt inside. _Goddammit_ why hadn't Sayid told him Kate had gone off on her own? What had happened to all that 'live together die alone' crap anyways?

'I hope you're not thinking of going after her.' Sayid stood at the entrance to his tent.

'Or what? You gonna torture me again?' he grabbed a paperback novel and shoved that in the bag as well.

Sayid gave what Sawyer assumed was his version of a laugh. 'No. We need you here, Sawyer.'

'What? You don't need me, you've made that very clear; now get out of my way.'

Sayid sighed and spoke slowly, like he was explaining something to a small child. 'Look, you know and I know that those pilots aren't all they claim to be. Kate can look after herself, as she's amply demonstrated - but these people can't. They need our protection.'

'Protection?' Sawyer nearly laughed along with him, 'They don't need protecting – they've done just fine without any of us for months now. We're the ones who've been marching 'round the jungle on crazy assed missions while they've been hanging out on the beach having a party.'

'You're wrong. They've only been able to live here _in peace_ because a group of us have acted as a buffer between them and The Others. Think about it. They're only safe because we have ensured their safety. That has to continue.'

Sawyer stood up straight and looked him in the eye. 'I ain't protecting nobody.'

'And how do you suppose you're going to find Kate? She left over three hours ago. You know and I know that you don't have a hope of finding her.'

'She's going North.' He said simply.

'And if by some miracle you find Kate and their camp, what then? You think the two of you are going to walk in, rescue Jack and then get out of there alive?'

Sawyer sighed. Sayid was right. The last thing he wanted to do was to end up with another gun to his head. But he couldn't just leave Kate…

'Besides, from what I've observed of them, they're more likely to kill you than Kate. Ironically she's probably safer on her own.'

Sawyer shook his head in exasperation. He thought back to their time in the cages and he had to admit that Sayid was right. It wasn't Kate they had threatened, it was him. He didn't like it though. Why hadn't she come to him? OK, he could see why she hadn't.

'Kate knows what she's doing.' Sayid said confidently, 'She'll be back.'

Sawyer sighed and put the bag down.

'Well, doesn't look like I have much choice then, does it?' he growled.

'Good.' Sayid's tone was condescending enough to make Sawyer want to just pack the bag and go. Sayid stood there a moment and watched him impassively. 'The pilot from the buried plane,' he said in the same flat tone that made Sawyer want to curse and yell at him, 'Apparently she woke up for long enough for Sun to give her something to drink and then she went back to sleep again. So it looks like she'll live… so now we wait until the morning.'

Sawyer threw himself down onto his bed as he watched Sayid leave. _Great_. At least now he'd finally get some sleep.

00000

The hanger deck was almost empty – most of the crew were getting some rack time after being on a shift that lasted three days straight during the search for the fleet. Apollo was relieved to see only the Chief and one or two others. That was good. He wanted to just get this over with and not have a bunch of knuckledraggers peering over his shoulder making comments and asking questions about what he was doing. They were a good team but they made everything that happened on this deck their personal business. Which was usually a good thing because not much got past them. But tonight he didn't want anyone making guesses about what he was up to.

'You got a moment, Chief?' Chief Tyrol turned to him expectantly. He was checking out one of the Raptors, bent under the wing with a spanner in his hand.

'Could I get a look at the flight recorder on one of the vipers?'

He straightened up, stretching a little and squinting over at Apollo. 'Yeah, sure. Which one?'

'The one I took out when Starbuck jumped away.' Apollo tried not to flinch when he said it. Even mentioning her name was getting hard.

He noticed how Chief Tyrol narrowed his eyes, but nodded, turning towards his office. 'I'll have to check the log,' he called back, 'See exactly what time she jumped.' Apollo stood nervously while the Chief ducked to the other side of the hanger deck 'OK, ten forty five, and you were in this baby here,' he patted one of the vipers sitting ready to load into the tubes. He crouched underneath the wing and stepped up to the cockpit.

'Any reason you want these, Captain?'

'No. I'm just… curious.' He knew the Chief wouldn't buy anything he said so he didn't see the point in making up some elaborate lie. Especially not after the way he'd taken off alone in the Raptor before. The Chief was onto him.

'Right. Well. There you go.' The Chief leant down and handed him a scrap of paper.

'Thanks.'

'You let me know if you need anything else.' The Chief was eyeing him suspiciously.

Apollo raised a hand in the air in acknowledgement as he folded the paper and walked quickly out of the hanger deck, feeling the Chief's eyes on him all the way.

Apollo lay on his rack and flipped the map over and over in his fingers. It didn't add up. He could see where Boomer and Racetrack's Raptor had been positioned: Faraday had said that was one of the ships that had gone to Earth. The other ship Faraday had plotted was that one there, right out of formation. It wasn't in the body of the fleet, but he recognized the position of the ship near it because it was exactly where he had been when he'd flown the viper right next to the Raider before Starbuck had jumped away. There was no doubt that the other ship was the Raider. Which meant Starbuck was in the other ship Faraday claimed had gone to Earth.

So what now? He couldn't just leave it. He couldn't have this piece of information and not do anything. It was late but he figured his father would still be awake. The guard at the hatch eyed him suspiciously, but he was the Old Man's _son_ for frak's sake, and he could have been here for a family visit, couldn't he? Not that they did family visits but the marine at the hatch didn't know that, so he only hesitated a fraction of a second before he let him pass without comment.

His father was reading, sitting in one of the easy chairs.

'Dad?'

Adama looked up in surprise. Apollo watched as his father paused a moment, clearly trying to gauge his mood. Was this going to be a shouting match kind of visit or- 'Take a seat.' He leant over and pulled some papers off the chair opposite him.

'I got your report,' he said, flipping through the pile. 'It was interesting. So Faraday claims he's from Earth?' Adama raised his eyebrows and shook his head. 'Of course it's bullshit. But interesting bullshit. What did you make of him?'

Apollo thought for a moment, 'Honestly? I don't know, Dad. It doesn't add up, I-'

'What adds up is he was bullshitting you. You got that, right?'

Apollo shifted in his seat. 'Yah, I got the bullshit Dad-'

'Then what?' his father sounded impatient, like he was stupid enough to be conned by Faraday's story. _Just like old times_.

Apollo drew in a deep breath. 'I want to go after Starbuck,' he said it with as much determination as he could. Then he waited.

Adama took off his glasses. 'We don't know where she is.'

'I've mapped out the coordinates that Faraday gave us. Dad, they pinpoint the _exact_ position of the Raider when Starbuck jumped.'

'That doesn't tell us anything. So they mapped our positions? So what? So they mapped the positions of two ships that happened to jump at the same time? It doesn't mean _squat_. Starbuck jumped to Caprica and there's nothing any of us can do about that. Let it go, Lee.'

'At least let me try, I just need to take one Raptor, check it out…'

'No. Faraday can't be trusted.'

'He found the fleet, Dad. What if he does really know where she is? We can't just do nothing.'

Adama gazed long and hard at the face of his son. 'Has it occurred to you that it was a trap?'

'I found the fleet dad, there was no sign of any Cylon-'

'- a trap that wasn't sprung. If it was Galactica they were after, maybe they let it ride. For now.'

'There were no Cylons, I checked the Dradus when I jumped in-'

'So how do you think Faraday plotted the position of every ship in this fleet – and the position of Cylon Basestars that we didn't even know about? It looks to me like they have new technology. I think we've pushed it far enough, son. We struck lucky, that's all.'

'So you're just going to jump away, leave Starbuck behind?'

'Laura wants us to wait and try and connect with her on Kobol.'

OK, it was _Laura_ now. Something in him bristled with irritation. So _Laura_ gets her plan and his father ignores the request of his own son? Then he laughed. 'Oh, I get it. If you don't do what she wants she lets out your little secret about Earth-'

Adama sighed. 'Let's not quarrel, Lee. This isn't your call. Whatever I decide will be in the best interests of the fleet. In the meantime get some rack time. You look like you need it.'

Apollo stood up. His father fingered the pages of his report. 'Look, I care about finding her as much as you do. But this isn't the way.'

'Then what is?'

Adama shook his head, 'I don't know.'

_Right_.

When Apollo left the room he could almost feel the guard wondering about their family time.

00000

It was nearly dark. Kate hoped she was getting close. She hadn't planned on being out in the jungle on her own in the dark, but it couldn't be much further now. She hadn't told the others where she was going because she didn't want any of them coming after her. She'd asked Hurley which way he'd come when The Others had let him go, and though she was pretty certain it wasn't their camp, it was clear enough from what they'd said to him that they lived somewhere close. On the North of the island. So she would head North. She'd thought about asking Sayid to go with her, but with Locke, Eko and Desmond all dead and that weird plane sticking in the ground with three armed pilots – well, there was enough going on there. And if the pilots could get them rescued then it was even more important to get Jack back so that he could get off the Island too. There was no way she was leaving the Island without him.

Sawyer had been ignoring her. She wasn't surprised. He was probably feeling used. It wasn't like that, though. She did care about him, only that – well, he wasn't Jack. She felt bad about not saying goodbye, but she didn't want him along. He'd almost gotten killed over there in those cages and she wasn't going to ask him to risk his life again. Not when she knew he wouldn't be doing it for Jack; he'd be doing it for her, and no way was she asking that of him again. Besides, she'd hung around long enough to realize that none of them were even talking about rescuing Jack. They'd given up on him. That or they weren't that interested. She felt a spike of bitterness. After all Jack had done for them, risking his life over and over and then it's just like he's forgotten. When she'd asked Sayid 'What about Jack?' he'd just shrugged and said they hadn't known where to look. But a five minute conversation with Hurley had told _her_ where to look, and Sayid knew where to find Rousseau as well as Kate did, so, she guessed he just wasn't that motivated. And why should he be? There was a real chance of getting rescued now, so he was probably right, better to focus on that.

The walk gave her time to think. It had all happened so fast. The cages, that guy threatening Sawyer, and – she hadn't gone to him out of pity. It wasn't because she felt sorry for him. She'd wanted to be close, that was all. Sawyer felt like, well, he felt like a part of her. She got him. Similar screwed up backgrounds. Not like Jack. He just oozed wealth and privilege. And that was the problem. He was some hot shot surgeon with his famous surgeon hospital life. She could never match up to that and she knew it. Maybe once, but not now. He was so squeaky clean she felt dirty just being near him. She could relax with Sawyer, not let her guard down – she couldn't _trust_ him, but she at least felt like she was with one of her own kind. And he was kind of hot. She smiled as she remembered how it had felt when she'd snuck into that cage. Yeah. He was hot. But she'd been with plenty of hot guys before, so that wasn't it. He was more than that – he was kind of like her, but a version of her she'd turned into, he was more like what she'd slid into than what she wanted to be. He was everything she wished she wasn't.

She had intended to make it watertight. Blow up that bastard, make it look like a gas leak, and as far as anyone is concerned it was a bad accident; the guy was drunk, left the gas on. Her mom collects the insurance and is set up for life, thanking her for setting her free. If Kate had thought for one second that that wasn't the way it would go she wouldn't have done it in the first place. She'd thought that afterwards she would just get on with her life, knowing her mom was finally happy; but love didn't work like that. Turns out her mom actually loved him, loved him more than her. That's what cut the most, that even with that bastard dead her mother had still chosen him over her own daughter. If her mother hadn't turned her in she'd have a life now and a good man and…. But that's not what happened. Her mother had turned her in, and Kate would never forget her mother's expression when she'd realized the truth, when she'd realized what Kate had done.

But even so, Kate still knew in her heart that the guy was a bastard and he had it coming.

Sawyer got that – or at least he would if they ever talked about it. But Jack wouldn't. Sure he'd pity her for stooping so low, but he wouldn't get it. And in her position he wouldn't have done what she had either. Maybe that was what made them so different, maybe that was why she'd gone to Sawyer when she'd really wanted Jack. She had bad stuff in her and she just felt plain dirty next to him. Ashamed. She'd almost told him when she'd first met him, on the beach, just after the crash. But then, when she'd gotten to know him a bit more she hadn't wanted him to find out. She didn't want to him to think less of her and if he knew she'd blown up her own father – hell, she didn't even think of him as her father, he wasn't her real dad. Her real dad was the man her mother had left, the one she'd cheated on to conceive her and then walked out on to go back to _Him_.

Her real dad had taken her on trips; camping, and – and then she'd found out he wasn't her father after all. Wayne was. And… and why the hell was she thinking about this now? Because she was alone, because Jack was gone, because she'd slept with Sawyer and now she felt even dirtier than before. Not from Sawyer, he'd been gentle and sweet with her, not from anything he'd done, just, well, just now she'd look at Jack and there'd be something else between them. Another dirty secret.

She heard a noise and turned quickly. She must be near Rousseau's camp by now. 'Danielle?' she called out softly. 'Is that you? It's Kate… I need your help.'


	21. Crossword

Chapter 21

Crossword

Apollo stood quietly by the wall with his arms folded over his chest, watching the scene as it unfolded before him. This was a secret meeting; Baltar, Gaeta, and a couple of trusted Marines ranged around the walls while his father and President Roslin sat stiff and imposing behind the long desk in the center of the room. Baltar and Gaeta were standing awkwardly to the side of the table. Like him, Baltar and Gaeta weren't sitting down. Either they weren't anticipating a long meeting or the thrones were reserved for the king and queen – his father and Roslin, who were looking increasingly like reigning monarchs. His unease increased exponentially. It looked suspiciously like a badly scripted court room drama, only his father and Roslin weren't really judges and none of them had any right to be there. He shifted uncomfortably against the wall. He got the feeling he wasn't going to like this.

He had no idea why his father had called this meeting now. It was late – it was the middle of the night, for frak's sake. He'd been ordered to show up and told that they were going to question Faraday about the virus. But his father had already had plenty of time to do that, so why now? Apollo hoped it was because of what he'd said to his father about going after Starbuck. Maybe his father wanted to check it out.

He turned towards the door as Faraday was brought into the room and pushed roughly into a chair. He was in front of the long table, but a little way back, exposed with several feet of empty space around him. Faraday licked his lips nervously and looked around, taking careful note of who was in the room. When his eyes met Apollo's he gave a surprised smile and then visibly relaxed, settling back a little in his chair and looking expectantly at the stern faces behind the desk.

'Who are you working for?' Adama's voice started the proceedings with a low growl. Faraday startled a little, then frowned.

'Um. Well, Oxford University, obviously. They pay my salary…' Apollo couldn't help but hide a small smile.

'You are responsible for the virus that disabled our navigational computer.' Adama said it flatly, like it was a statement of fact.

Faraday squirmed a little, wriggling himself into some awkward angle on the chair, but somehow he held Adama's gaze and his voice was steady. 'No, I just found it on your desk. Look, um, I'm sorry if it turned out to be a trap – I really didn't think - I mean planting a virus and then giving the solution inside it was a little, um, _unique_, but I really didn't think that it was a trick – but I see Captain Apollo is here, so, um, did it work? Did you find the other ships at the coordinates I gave you?' Faraday was babbling, looking over at Apollo with a hopeful but confused expression on his face. Clearly no one had told him that yes, they had found the fleet using the coordinates he'd given them.

Adama simply sighed. 'Don't play dumb. We know you planted the virus and that you had those coordinates memorized. The question is, who else are you working with?'

'The coordinates were there in the computer code,' Faraday was sitting more upright now. 'There are buried subroutines that point to those four coordinates. I had nothing to do with the virus beyond solving it for you.'

Adama was watching the prisoner with obvious disdain. 'Doctor Baltar, where is the virus in this program?'

Baltar stepped forward and picked up the printout. 'There.' He said, pointing to the now familiar looking lines of code.

'And can you see a buried subroutine anywhere on it?'

Baltar shook his head. 'No. I've been through it several times. He's making it up.'

Faraday shook his head and leant forward, pointing to a section of code. Apollo saw the Marines stiffen, but Adama gestured them to stand down. '_Here_,' said Faraday, glancing up at Baltar, 'is the first line of code. Then here. And here.'

Baltar shook his head, his mouth in a thin sneer, 'It's all pure fabrication, isn't it? You think you can fool all these people,' Baltar swept his arm around the room, 'Because they don't have the first idea about computers, but I actually know what I'm talking about and there really isn't a buried subroutine, now is there?' Apollo had to hand it to Baltar, he certainly took on the role of interrogator with a certain panache. He could sense his father's irritation across the other side of the room.

Faraday sat up in the chair. Apollo could see he was trying to remain polite, 'Actually, I think you're the one who doesn't know what he's talking about. Look, I'll show you. You take this figure here, that line links to this one, here – see that? _That_ is the link. Unusual, original, disguised, but it _will_ work effectively as a link. Try it.'

Gaeta had stepped forward and was looking over his shoulder, 'I think I see what you mean. This symbol here is linking that line to the subroutine?'

'Exactly. And if you take the last four lines here, and extrapolate the bearing you'll find only four possible combinations.'

Gaeta looked up. 'I think he's right, Sir.'

'So are you saying that he could have just used this printout to find the fleet?'

'No,' Gaeta shook his head, 'he would still have to find the coordinates. We would still have needed to go back to the last jump spot to get an accurate bearing.'

Faraday shook his head impatiently, 'No, you _can_ do it from here. You just need to plug in the formula for inertial drift. Do you have a star chart of your last position? – Actually, I think it was calculated at the start of this sequence, here – yes, look it's even done for you. If you take that figure there you can get your initial bearings, then it's just a matter of extrapolating this from that quantifier and then….'

'He's talking rubbish,' said Baltar, 'This is complete and utter nonsense. Commander, this man is just making it all up. I'm sure he's going to convince you of what he's doing by trying to blind you with science, but this is all some elaborate fabrication. He clearly knew the coordinates already and he's trying to cover his tracks.'

'But why give the coordinates to us?' asked Gaeta. 'I mean, we'd lost the fleet.'

Faraday paused. 'OK,' he said, 'I'll write down the formula and you can work it out. Of course I did this as a mental calculation from memory, but I'm sure you'll be able to come up with the same figures.' He wrote a series of complicated equations on a piece of paper and handed it to Baltar.

Baltar examined the formula. 'Fine, I'll just work through these then, shall I?'

'Of course there are quicker ways of calculating the coordinates, but those formulae are in my notebook and, as I didn't have access to that at the time, I had to work it out from first principles.'

Baltar smiled and shook his head, quickly running down through the line of equations and writing in his answers. There was silence in the room as they all waited for Baltar to finish. Baltar was making some weird humming noise as he worked his way down the sheet of paper. It certainly looked impressive from where Apollo was standing.

'There!' he said triumphantly. 'As I thought, this is a pile of rubbish. My answers are nowhere near the coordinates he gave to Captain Apollo.'

Adama sighed.

'Let me see your workings,' demanded Faraday. Adama nodded and passed it to him. He quickly scanned the sheet. You've made a mistake here, and here. That figure should be 4.5976, and that one 7.5552. Baltar frowned and took back the sheet of paper. There was a pause as Baltar went back through his calculations. He drew in his breath sharply when he reached the section Faraday had pointed out to him.

'Dr Baltar?'

'Faraday is correct, Madam President. I'll just correct those.' Two minutes later he looked up, then silently handed the sheet of paper to Adama. He could tell by their expressions that the figures tallied. Faraday had proved his point; there was enough information in that virus to find the fleet without him having any prior knowledge of their coordinates.

Adama looked carefully at Faraday. 'You said there were more formulas in your notebook. He picked up the book from beside him on the desk and passed it over. Show us where.'

Faraday grabbed the book eagerly and nimbly flicked through the pages.

'Ah!' he said, 'Right, here we are. I'll copy it down for you.' He wrote down a series of symbols and passed them to Dr Baltar.

'I – I don't recognize half of these symbols.'

'Maybe they're concepts you haven't discovered yet.' Faraday said smugly.

'Clear the room,' said Adama suddenly, 'everyone except Captain Apollo and President Roslin. Thank you everyone.'

'Don't you think, that as the resident computer expert and as the Vice President, I should be allowed-'

'Thank you Dr Baltar, that will be all.' Baltar hesitated, then sighed theatrically before giving one last glare in Roslin's direction before he headed towards the door.

Apollo stood by the wall watching as everyone filed out. He wasn't sure why his father had kept him in here – security perhaps, seeing as he'd dismissed the guards as well.

'Alright Mr Faraday, we're listening.'

Faraday ran his hands through his hair and leant forward earnestly, 'You have to understand that this is very important. It is essential that Desmond goes back to where he came from and that the people from here are returned.'

'Wait. Wait a minute, is there some part I'm missing?' Laura Roslin sat taller in her chair, 'What is all this talk of people being returned?'

Apollo cleared his throat, 'Madam President, Mr Faraday believes that some of our people were taken to Desmond's –' he paused, '_planet_.'

'Desmond's planet?'

'Madam President, Mr Faraday believes that both he and Desmond are from Earth.'

'From Earth? But-'

'Apparently he arrived here on an energy matrix.' Adama shared a look with Roslin, raising his eyebrows slightly to let her know what a pile of crap he thought it was.

'But they know we're trying to get to Earth.' she said quietly.

'Looks that way.'

Apollo watched her expression harden. 'And this is their way of telling us.'

Apollo shifted uncomfortably in his spot against the wall. He had to admit he agreed with her. If the Cylons knew that they goal was to find Earth, then clearly they had some good Intel. Someone in the fleet had been passing them information.

'Alright then, Mr Faraday, draw us a map and show us how to get to Earth.' Adama pushed a pen and paper across the table towards him. Faraday didn't move.

'I can't do that.'

'Oh? That's convenient.' Roslin smiled her most political smile. Apollo could sense the net closing around Faraday. Perhaps Faraday sensed it too because now he was speaking more quickly, a nervous edge to his voice.

'Look, it isn't like that.' He thought for a moment, holding one finger in the air, then leaned forward and said earnestly, 'OK, imagine two houses with adjoining walls. If someone punches a hole in one of the walls you can see through into that room, and depending on how close you are to the hole you can get a narrow or a wide view of what is inside the room. But you can't see how to get from one room to the other. Desmond punched a hole in space-time and I simply followed him through the hole. I can get us back through the same hole, but I can't draw you a map of how the two houses interconnect.'

'So why don't you give us the coordinates and we'll send a ship there and see where it is.' Laura Roslin's smile was still plastered on her face.

'I'm afraid I can't do that either.'

'Why not?'

'Because –' he hesitated, then leant sideways in his chair, 'It involves some extremely complex calculations. If I gave you the coordinates to get you there, you'd still need _me_ to calculate a new set of coordinates to get you back. Besides, we don't need more of you there – I thought the whole point was to get everyone back in the right place.'

'Who sent you?' Roslin's voice was hard and cold. Apollo shifted uncomfortably. He didn't like the way this was going. He recognized that Roslin was moving towards the end game, which in the circumstances weren't looking good for Faraday or Desmond.

'Who sent me? Nobody sent me – well it was my mother's idea, actually, so I guess I have her to thank for this.'

'Your mother?'

'She's a temporal physicist. She said that she had figured out a way to map spatial anomalies. And although _theoretically_ I thought it was possible to travel to the place that I was observing, in _practice_ I was as surprised as you were when I showed up here.' There was a pause. It was clear that neither his father nor Roslin believed what Faraday was telling them. As far as he could tell, they had already made up their minds. He had to hand it to them, they did make a deadly team.

'Why is this book in code?' Adama was holding up Faraday's black notebook.

Faraday looked confused. 'It's not.'

'I don't recognize these marks,' he said, opening a page at random and holding it up to Faraday.

'Look, some of the mathematical symbols may be unfamiliar to you - as I said before, there might be concepts there that you haven't discovered yet-'

'If you were really from Earth, what are the chances of you speaking the same language and being able to communicate with us at all?' Roslin's gaze was direct now, the smile had gone.

'That is something that has puzzled me,' said Faraday. 'I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that.'

'What switched you off?' It was his father who asked the question. It took Apollo by surprise and he could see by Faraday's expression that it had confused him as well.

'When you were discovered, you and Desmond were both unconscious for an extended period. What switched you off? And why?'

Faraday thought for a moment, 'That's an interesting question,' he said. 'Or, well, that's an interesting way of putting it. I'm not one hundred percent certain, but I think the move across the space-time fold was such a huge adjustment, that it is almost like the brain had to reboot – a bit like a computer resetting itself. It had to shut down completely and then restart again.'

Adama and Roslin exchanged glances. Apollo saw by the hardening of their stare that they had got what they wanted from Faraday. Faraday noticed the look and squirmed uneasily. 'I only anticipate that it would happen the first time, though. Once the brain has had a chance to calibrate the jump then it should be able to repeat the operation without having to shut itself down.'

'I think we've heard enough.' Adama nodded to Apollo who slid open the door and gestured to the waiting marines to come back inside.

Once Faraday had been removed the room seemed strangely empty. Apollo stayed in his position by the door, almost holding his breath to hear what his father and President Roslin were going to conclude from the meeting.

'Well, what do you think?' Adama spoke first.

'I think he's in league with the Cylons. No, let me modify that, I think he _is_ a Cylon. I think the Cylons have come up with a new model that doesn't show up in Baltar's test.'

'I'm inclined to agree with you. So given that they are both Cylons, what do we do with them?'

'What we always do with Cylons,' Roslin's voice was hard. 'We airlock them.'

Adama sighed, 'If we do that then they will download into new bodies and give away our position. We've been here days now with no sign of the Cylons, so for some reason they haven't been able to communicate with the rest of the Cylon fleet. We may prefer to have them here where we can at least keep an eye on them. If they are some sort of prototype that can beam themselves directly onto our ship then we might do better keeping them locked up on Galactica.'

'And what if they beam themselves out of the Brig?'

'I think if they could do that they would have by now.'

'Hold on,' Apollo pushed himself away from the wall. 'That's one hell of an assumption we're making. We don't know for sure that they _are_ Cylons, I mean, if he _is_ a Cylon then why did he help us? Why do that?'

'To try and get us to trust him.' Adama replied curtly. It was clear he didn't want to have this conversation again.

'But they could have destroyed the fleet, and us along with it. Whoever planted that virus could have destroyed us, but they didn't. Why go to all that trouble to make a virus that scatters the fleet and then send them all to one location that we can find using the virus itself?'

'The only one who could find the fleet again was Faraday. Baltar couldn't do it.'

'Even so, why not just kill us all? What if he was telling the truth, and Starbuck-'

'Which part do you want, Captain?' Roslin cut in, 'The energy-matrix travel or the strange English speaking aliens who just happen to come from Earth? How far-fetched do you want to go?'

'Well, surely if he was a Cylon he would have chosen a more plausible story?'

'I think he's toying with us.' Adama's tone was definitive. 'Leobin was the philosopher, and this one is posing as a scientist. They are just frakking with us. No. We keep them locked up for now, but if it looks like they pose a threat then we will have them destroyed. In the meantime I'll get Lieutenant Gaeta to take a look at that book. Maybe he can crack the code.'

Apollo sighed and looked up at the ceiling. It was clear that neither his father or Roslin were going to listen anymore. They had made up their minds. So much for hoping they would try and go after Starbuck.

'Captain.' Adama's voice cut through his thoughts. Apollo met his father's gaze. 'Go get some rack time.' Apollo just looked back at him blankly. His father frowned, then he stood, offering Roslin his hand as he helped her up off her chair. Apollo watched as they both filed out. When they had gone he stood for a moment, his back still against the wall. _Frak_. Well, it looked like he was on his own.


	22. Great Escape

Chapter 22

Great Escape

Apollo walked away from Faraday's mock trial with a growing feeling of unease. He had recognized the glint in Roslin's eye and he didn't like it one bit. Suddenly he preferred it when his father and the president were fighting. No, scratch that, _that_ wasn't good either. Actually, his father and Roslin were a bad combination whether they were fighting or not.

Apollo shook himself. The night shift was easing down and the corridors were mostly deserted. It was late, but he wasn't ready to go back to his rack yet. Instead he wandered the corridors, loosely thinking he might head on to the gym and get out some of his frustrations on a punch bag. In the end he found himself in the pilots' briefing room, stirring himself up even more with memories of those who were gone. He stood at the podium looking out at the rows of empty seats. Sure, they'd be filled again in a few hours, but not with the faces he was missing. Or one face in particular, grinning up at him with that insubordinate glint in her eye. He took a long, deep breath.

He shouldn't be doing this. It wasn't helping at all.

He distracted himself by pulling out the latest star chart, spreading it out on the table at the back of the room. Gaeta updated the chart every day, filling in the blanks as they mapped each star system they were traveling through. On this one was Kobol and the asteroid belt that he and Skulls had gotten mixed up in. Apart from that the chart was blank. He spread out the map Faraday had drawn and compared the two. The basic details were the same, but Faraday's map had a couple more planetary bodies that were missing on Gaeta's version. He'd seen enough now to be fairly certain that if he took a Raptor out there he'd find that Faraday's chart was correct.

Apart from the basic map of this star system Faraday had marked in the positions of Galactica and the fleet, as well as several Base Stars that they hadn't even been aware of. He zoned in on the little dot that he knew represented his Viper. He gently touched the dot next to it; Starbuck's Raider. Faraday had drawn a ring around it when he'd told him that it was one of the two ships that had gone to Earth.

_Bullshit. Of course it was bullshit._

But how in hell had Faraday plotted those positions so exactly? Even if he _was_ a Cylon spy how would he have known so precisely where Apollo's Viper had been at that moment? Unless the Cylons had developed some sort of sophisticated scan – but in that case the Cylons could have jumped a Base Star in the middle of the fleet and destroyed them already. It didn't add up. Maybe Faraday was a Cylon, or maybe he was crazy, or both. Whatever way he looked at it, the map was evidence that he couldn't ignore. The whole picture wasn't as simple as his father made out. It wasn't enough to just say that Faraday was a Cylon; there was something else happening here. Apollo didn't know what – and he sure as hell wasn't stupid enough to trust Faraday at all - but even so, if there was the slightest chance that Faraday knew where Starbuck was, well, how could he ignore that?

And yeah, he knew Faraday was bullshitting, and if it weren't for the map he could ignore it, but that map was too accurate, too well plotted. It had his exact position at the time Starbuck had jumped away.

He didn't know what his father and Roslin had planned for the prisoners, but now that Desmond and Faraday had been flagged as Cylons the gloves were off. It was only a matter of time now before they were both interrogated, and as Cylons they had no protection in Colonial law. Whoever questioned them could do whatever they damn well liked. The only problem was that was no proof that either Desmond or Faraday _were_ Cylons. Roslin had dismissed the results of Baltar's test too easily, like it was her right to simply toss aside evidence when it didn't fit her version of reality, and OK, Faraday's explanation was crazy and stupid… but even so, how could he let them be tortured because Roslin was on a rampage?

Another reason to get them out of there.

Hell, was he really thinking this way? Was he seriously considering this? He thought quietly for a moment and realized that, yeah, he was. He was going to do it. Partly because he had to know. Partly because he didn't leave his pilots behind, and partly because, well, just because. Because his guts or something told him it was the right thing to do. Both Starbuck and his father had kept telling him he over-thought everything. Well, now he was running on instinct.

It would be easy enough to get the prisoners onto the hanger deck. He just had to order the guards to take them there. There was no reason for them to disobey his order or suspect that he wasn't acting on the full authority of his father. Once he had the prisoners on a Raptor he could be gone before anyone knew about it. The hardest part would be getting off of Galactica without anyone in CIC getting a whiff of it.

On a hunch he decided to check if Gaeta was working on Faraday's book. If Gaeta had cracked the code then that might at least tell him something more about what was going on. Even though it was the middle of the night he guessed that Gaeta would be up working on it; the guy was more than keen.

Sure enough, there he was, sat in front of one of the number crunching computers next to Baltar's lab. Apollo stood by the door a moment watching him work. Gaeta's back was to him and he was humming tunelessly. He seemed in his element here.

'You're not asleep, Lieutenant?'

Gaeta jumped and then turned quickly, smiling when he realized who it was. 'Um, no sir. I just thought I'd make a start on this.'

Apollo pushed away from the door frame and wandered up to him. 'Any luck?' he asked.

'As a matter of fact, yes,' Gaeta shifted over so Apollo could get a better look over his shoulder. 'Some of it is a simple alphabetical sequence that was easy enough to decode. It's the mathematical symbols I'm working on just now. They are a lot more complex.'

'Can I take a look at the book?'

'Sure.' Gaeta handed it to him. The cover was black leather; it was well worn, the corners hadn't been edged so they were curling at the sides. He flicked through the mass of pencil marks on the pages. It was hard to think that this was actually writing.

'You know what it says?'

'Um, yeah, um, here, this says 'Dinner 8pm. And, this says, _the trajectory of the curve _and then some mathematical formula. There's actually a shopping list here somewhere,' Gaeta flicked through, then, gave a little laugh, _Eggs, milk, bread_. – and um, some stuff about theories of time travel and this looks like some names and addresses. No places I've heard of.' Gaeta shrugged. 'I guess someone had fun making this up.'

Apollo had to admit he was surprised. He'd been hoping that a look at the insides of the book would make it all clearer – but a _shopping list_, for frak's sake? He shook his head incredulously. Either the Cylons had suddenly developed a sense of humor, or… he nodded to Gaeta and left quietly.

He changed quickly into his flying suit and stepped briskly onto the hanger deck. There were three Raptors ready to go. He chose one and quickly went through the pre-flight checks. One of the knuckle draggers on duty watched him for a while and then decided to leave him to it. It was nothing new to have him looking over the planes they'd be taking out in the next shift. It was a familiar enough sight to make Apollo almost invisible. He was just finishing up when he noticed the two marines from the Brig standing quietly in the shadows with Desmond and Faraday. He'd ordered them to be quiet about bringing the prisoners down here, and they knew that these two were a well guarded secret, though Apollo had no illusions that the whole crew knew exactly who and what they were by now. There weren't really secrets on Galactica for longer than a shift change. He saw Faraday smile in relief when he saw him, looking around expectantly when he noticed where they were. Apollo gestured the marines to bring the prisoners to the Raptor, then dismissed them, motioning Desmond and Faraday inside. Faraday hesitated, then walked up the ramp into the Raptor. He was looking around curiously.

'You can sit down there,' Apollo pointed to the seats beside the ECO station.

Faraday nodded. Apollo could see the relief etched on his face. Desmond followed him quietly, sitting down behind the hatch. His eyes were wary and he was chewing his lip nervously. He didn't say anything.

Apollo took a deep breath and turned back to Faraday. 'You're going to take me to wherever those ships disappeared to.' He watched as Faraday nodded enthusiastically.

'I'll need my book.' Faraday said, looking up at him crookedly.

'Book?'

'Yes I came here with a black book. I need it.'

Apollo shook his head again, 'I can't get you the book. We don't have time.'

Faraday sighed. 'I need the formulae, the coordinates-'

'I thought you said you never forgot a number…' Apollo's voice was sharp. He didn't have time for this. 'Look, if we're going, we're going _now_. No book.' He couldn't hide the hint of impatience in his voice. There was no way he could get the book off Gaeta and still get off of Galactica. No way would Gaeta let him pull another stunt, he'd be over to his father within five minutes.

Faraday frowned. 'OK, well, do you have a pen and paper then? It'll be easier if I can write it down.'

Apollo nodded, grabbing the log and a pen from the ECO station and handing it quickly to Faraday. 'Now, you two stay back here. I'm going to fly this thing and if either of you so much as move, I'll shoot you. You got that?'

Faraday's eyes grew wider and he dragged in a steep breath. Apollo looked over at Desmond, who nodded quietly. He was eyeing Apollo suspiciously. Something about him worried Apollo more than Faraday. He was too quiet. Apollo had already experienced Desmond's angry outbursts when they were in the Brig together. He wasn't so sure about this quiet version. There was too much restrained anger underneath and Apollo knew it was just a matter of time before he blew. There was nothing he could do about that right now though. He made his way towards the cockpit, hoping they wouldn't jump him from behind.

'Going somewhere, Captain?' Apollo swore under his breath and turned at the voice. Chief Tyrol stood at the bottom of the ramp, eyeing him suspiciously. He wasn't dressed in his usual coveralls, so he wasn't on duty. He must be here because it was night time and he guessed the chief still wasn't sleeping.

'Yeah. Look, Chief. I need to take this Raptor out.'

The Chief's brow furrowed. 'You need authorization, Captain, you know that.'

Apollo sighed and stepped towards him. He could see Faraday and Desmond's wide eyed faces. Thankfully Chief Tyrol couldn't see them from where he was standing at the bottom of the ramp. Apollo hesitated a beat, then took out his sidearm and pointed it squarely at the Chief's head.

The Chief's face registered surprise but no fear. He cocked his head to one side, holding his hands up, palms up in a gesture of surrender. 'Oh C'mon now, Captain, you don't want to do that.'

Apollo kept the gun steady.

The Chief shook his head, 'Sorry Captain, I can't…'

'No, I know you can't. That's why I'm pointing the _frakking_ gun at you, Chief. Now get this Raptor authorized to go.'

The Chief took in a deep breath and then nodded slowly. 'Give me a couple of minutes, OK?' He ambled over to the edge of the hanger deck, picking up the phone outside his office. Apollo stood at the hatch to the Raptor, casting a nervous glance over at Faraday and Desmond. He could still cover them from here and watch the Chief as well. He kept the sidearm hidden, aware that if any of the other knuckle draggers saw that he had the chief at gunpoint they'd be on him in a second. He watched as the Chief held the phone to his ear and started speaking, turning to face Apollo so that he could hear clearly what he was saying.

'Chief Tyrol, yeah, patch me through to CIC, 'Look, there's been a medical emergency on Cloud nine, Raptor 497 is going out with Doc Cottle. Captain Apollo's authorization.'

He put the phone back on its hook with a definitive click and walked back to where Apollo was standing. 'You got your Raptor, Captain.' Tyrol hesitated and then said more quietly. 'Is this about Starbuck?'

Apollo felt his jaw clench. 'You're better not knowing, Chief.' He put the gun in its holster and headed back inside the plane.

'Hey, look,' the Chief jumped up onto the bottom of the ramp. 'Who else is with you?' He strode up to the top of the ramp and looked inside. His eyes opened wide when he saw Desmond and Faraday sitting there. 'You're kidding me, right? You going out there _alone_ with those two?'

Apollo watched him carefully. 'That's right.'

The Chief looked away, chewing his lip, then he stepped fully into the plane. 'You know I can't let you do this, Captain.'

'Get out Chief,'

'Uh uh, no way, Sir. Look, let me at least come with you. The Old Man would never forgive me if I let you go out alone again.'

Apollo sighed. It was tempting. Tyrol was the best NCO on Galactica. He'd seen him in action on Kobol. He was good. But no way was he prepared to risk him on this. But it looked like he wasn't going to get a choice, and there wasn't time to argue. Besides, now he knew what was going on… 'OK then, have it your way.' Apollo closed the hatch, shutting the Chief inside. 'You know how to work the FTL?' 'Um, Yeah, I've taken it apart often enough.' Chief Tyrol glanced over at Desmond and Faraday.

Apollo nodded. 'OK. Here, cover them,' Apollo passed over his sidearm and then slid into the pilot's seat. The Chief took the gun and trained it on the two prisoners. They both looked terrified. Apollo hoped grimly that they stayed that way and didn't turn into death machines once they took off.

Apollo held his breath as the Raptor flew smoothly out of the flight pod and into space. He took the Raptor around the edge of the fleet and stopped it blindside to the Tylium processing ship. Their Dradus signals would merge and they would be hidden, but still have time for him to signal Galactica and have the Raptor destroyed if the two prisoners tried anything. So far they were both very quiet; Faraday was writing frantically in the log and Desmond was sitting with his eyes closed, completely shut off from his surroundings. Apollo cut the engines and turned around.

'I want to know exactly where we're going. You need to convince me that this is for real or we go straight back to Galactica right now.' He pulled out the empty star chart and handed it to Faraday. 'Show me where you plan to take us.'

'Look, you're going to have to give me a couple of minutes to get all this stuff down. Without my journal I have to – well, a couple more minutes, OK?'

Apollo sat and waited, watching Faraday frantically scribble page after page of mathematical symbols. After about five minutes he had covered three pages. He finally took a deep breath and looked up. 'It's not ideal, but that'll have to do.' Then he took the map and looked at it intently, flicking through the equations he'd scribbled into the log and carefully copying some numbers onto the chart. He paused a moment, pencil poised over the paper. Then he deftly marked in two positions.

'This first position here is where we make the first hyper-light jump. This takes us to the edge of the stream. We then need to go slowly into the current and then, once we're at the eye of the storm we make the second hyper light jump – the coordinates don't matter for that one - and that will take us back.'

'And what do you propose to do about the four Base Stars that are sitting right there?'

'Base Stars? Um, I'm not with you.'

'Don't play ignorant, there are four Cylon Base Stars sitting there. There is no way we would have time to jump to those coordinates and get out alive.'

To his credit Faraday did look genuinely shocked. 'OK, then I suppose we have to jump right in, but I – right, OK, I can do it.'

'Captain?' It was the Chief, he pulled him aside and spoke softly.

'Yes Chief?'

'What's going on?'

Apollo sighed, 'This man claims to know where Starbuck, Boomer and Racetrack are. He claims that they were caught in some sort of blast and he says he knows where they are. He says he can take us there.'

'But Boomer's dead.'

'Not according to Faraday.'

The Chief sucked in a long, slow breath. Apollo could see he was visibly shocked. He blinked once, chewing his lip. 'You think it's a trap?' he asked finally.

Apollo shrugged, 'If it is, they die.'

The Chief thought for a moment, 'It's a bit of a long shot, don't you think? I mean, are you sure this isn't just wishful thinking? Look, I want them back too sir, but this… this is just crazy.'

Apollo hesitated. The Chief was right; it _was_ crazy. He hadn't realised that Faraday was intending to jump them in the middle of four Base Stars. Not only was it crazy, it was suicide. He nodded.

Just then Faraday looked up, 'OK, I have a new trajectory. I've been tracking this signature here,' he pointed to the position of Starbuck and the Raider,' but if I map it from the other ship then we avoid the Base Stars.' He marked in another position that took them to Kobol.

'There are two Base Stars around that planet.'

'Damn! Alright, just give me a moment, if I can try and figure out where the stream actually runs in relation to those two points then we should be able to find an entry point that would take us-'

'What's with the stream?'

'Huh?'

'What's this stream?'

'It's the energy movement Desmond created when he came here – he left a sort of swirling vortex. The hole is closing and over time it will shrink, but at the moment it should be large enough for us to get pulled in if we go to any one of these points here.,' He marked a line on the star chart and looked up at Apollo expectantly.

Apollo half smiled and shook his head.

'Look,' said Faraday briskly, 'I understand this is hard, but why not just go to these coordinates? Then you can jump back here, and if it works we'll be taken into the vortex, and if it doesn't we'll just end up back here. How does that sound? And you can choose exactly where on this line you want to take us.'

Apollo nodded, 'Alright. We'll do it. But listen up, If we jump and there is any Cylon activity then you're dead. You got that?'

Faraday licked his lips nervously and swallowed hard, nodding. He wrote a string of numbers on the page of his notebook and showed them to the Chief, who looked nervously at Apollo, but then punched them in. Apollo pulled the Raptor out away from the side of the Tylium ship, taking them far enough away from the fleet to make the jump. He nodded over at the Chief.

'Spooling up the FTL. Jump in five, four three two one, JUMP.' The view of Galactica disappeared. Apollo felt his stomach rise into his throat as they made the jump, quickly checking his instrument panel when came out the other side.

'Dradus is empty,' said Apollo, relieved.

Faraday breathed a sigh. 'Now follow this bearing at sub-light speed, for say, oh, half an hour,' Faraday handed another piece of paper to the Chief, who passed it up to Apollo. 'Once we are far enough in, then you set the hyper light drive to return you to Galactica. But it should take us into the stream and back to Desmond's original point of focus.' Apollo gave him a skeptical look before he engaged the engines. They flew on Faraday's bearings, looking anxiously for any signs of Cylon activity.

00000

Desmond sat quietly at the back of the Raptor. So this was tonight's entertainment. He'd given up trying to make sense of anything these people did or said. He was sure the conversation about planets and space ships was for his benefit, but he was getting good at screening it all out, just noticing when they talked about food and drink and sleep. Those were the basics. Those were the only things he was going to respond to. He had to admit that this hatch was impressive. And the plane, well, he couldn't help but wonder where they were taking him now. As the Raptor pulled away from the ship, base, whatever it was they had been on, he could see stars. It must be night. They must be taking them away under cover of darkness. It looked more like they were on the sea. Big sea, big horizons, the stars shining low on the horizon. When he'd been on his own boat he felt that sometimes - the sea and stars meeting. He looked longingly at the patch of sky he could see beyond Apollo's shoulder. Maybe they were finally taking him away from the Island. He didn't dare hope. Or could he? Were they finally taking him home?

He'd gotten a good look at the aircraft on the hanger deck; it looked like some sort of jump-jet, a bit like an Apache helicopter without the rotor blades, full of fancy electronic equipment. But when the Raptor had pulled up and round, swinging past some other ships, Desmond had frowned in surprise. Over Apollo's shoulder he'd been able to see all of the ships, the _whole_ of them, as if they were floating in mid air. It was at that point that he felt his sense of reality tipping. _That_ didn't make sense at all. And then it struck him; _of course_ this was just some fancy flight simulator. They hadn't taken off, they were still in that hanger bay. This was all part of their attempt to try to test how far they had to go before he believed the space story and accepted their version of reality. He shook his head and numbed his mind, returning to his passive state. That tiny moment of hope would be his downfall. It wasn't going to happen again. No. He would let it all wash over him, nothing would find a hook in him to destabilize his sense of who he was. He would endure this and wait and hopefully when they had finished with him they would let him return to Penny and he would never ever leave her again.

He'd ignored the conversations between Captain Apollo, the new man they called the Chief and Daniel Faraday. There wasn't much point in even listening to them, but he couldn't help but notice when some of it had got quite heated. More threats to shoot them. He was getting used to the threats now. He ignored them too. If they wanted to shoot him there wasn't much he could do about it. After the initial burst of conversation there was a long silence. Apollo sat in the front at the controls and the Chief stood awkwardly with a gun covering both him and Faraday. Faraday seemed oblivious to the gun, choosing instead to go ahead and write his memoirs in the new book they had handed him. Desmond wasn't sure how long this went on. The silence was tense; Apollo and the Chief both strung tight as springs, Faraday scribbling like a fool. Desmond tried to run his mind back to neutral again.

_No judgments. No expectations._

Finally Faraday stopped writing. He stood up, causing the Chief to hold the gun higher, pointing it right at him. Faraday held his hands up and sat back down, 'I just need to check where we are, OK?' The Chief glanced over at Apollo who nodded quietly. Desmond watched as Faraday moved carefully, standing behind Apollo and staring down at the instruments in front of him. Desmond saw the look in the Chief's eyes - he was tense, ready to pounce. Faraday seemed completely unaware of it, leaning over Apollo's shoulders. 'Are these the coordinates here?' he asked, pointing down to something on the instrument panel that Desmond couldn't see. He saw the back of Apollo's head as he nodded.

'That should do it then,' said Faraday, running his hands nervously through his hair. 'Ok, so now we try and jump back to Galactica using the hyper light drive. In theory that should take us back to Earth.' Desmond resisted the urge to sneer out loud, instead he closed his eyes and leant his head back, taking a few deep breaths as he blanked out the scene before him. He didn't open his eyes when he heard the Chief's voice counting down.

'FTL jump in five, four, three, two, one. JUMP.'


	23. Crash and Burn

Chapter 23

Crash and Burn

Starbuck waking up POV

00000

The coordinates back to Galactica were automatically programmed into the FTL drive, so it was a no brainer for the Chief to jump the Raptor back to the fleet. Even so, Apollo had watched carefully, one eye on Chief Tyrol, the other on the two prisoners still sitting quietly behind him at the back of the Raptor. This wasn't exactly how his great escape was supposed to go. During the Chief's countdown to the jump he'd been rehearsing what he would say to his father when he returned empty handed, tail between his legs, and thinking about the expression on Laura Roslin's face when he had to justify his actions, how he'd held the Chief at gunpoint and committed yet another act of insubordination… at least _this_ time it probably wouldn't count as mutiny. He'd only threatened the Chief with his sidearm because he hadn't wanted to get the Chief into trouble. That excuse would at least hold _some_ water.

Of course he knew he had been stupid to get caught up in the irrational hope of seeing her again. He should have been man enough to face the facts; she was gone for good and no amount of hope or wishful thinking would bring her back.

It was these thoughts that were filling his head when the Chief completed the countdown for the jump. When Apollo heard the final word _jump, _he had turned back almost languidly to the controls, fully expecting to see Galactica and the fleet laid out before him once the jump was completed. He had even cleared his throat ready for the awkward exchange he was about to have with CIC when they started questioning him on why he'd jumped away from the fleet when he was supposed to be on a medical mission to _Cloud Nine_.

He felt the usual inside out in his belly as the FTL drive kicked in, and in that split second he managed to find the time to mentally berate himself for being too wrapped up in his own thoughts. He should be more alert to what was going on behind him in the Raptor, not staring out into space wondering how he would justify his latest escapade to his father and President Roslin. He had to be prepared for Desmond and Faraday to make their move, take the Raptor and try to escape. He felt his body tense, getting ready to spring out of the pilot seat and rush to the back of the Raptor to take them both down.

What he hadn't expected was to be suddenly thrown into a crisis and wind up fighting for control of the Raptor. The switch was instantaneous. One moment the smooth dark of space, the next jarring vibrations as the Raptor slammed into atmosphere, the sudden pressure on the hull making the whole structure shudder. And suddenly they were flying swiftly through the choppy darkness, a quick glance at his instrument panel showing him they were headed quickly towards the ground. It was dark so he couldn't see a thing out of the front of the cockpit.

Was this Kobol? The coordinates plugged into the FTL should have taken them back to Galactica, unless Chief Tyrol had gotten it wrong - he _was _a deck Chief after all, not an ECO - Apollo should have punched in the frakking coordinates himself, because if this was Kobol there were two base stars sitting it out right on top of them and no way would they have a chance in hell against them. _Stop overthinking, Lee_ he chided as he tried to lengthen the angle of descent. The Raptor lurched suddenly, pulling sharply to one side. Apollo swore under his breath and fought to stabilize the plane, letting out a quick sigh of relief when he felt some response from the controls. Something was pulling them in, and although he was managing to cut their speed, at this rate it wouldn't be enough to land safely. He thought about trying to jump them out of there but a quick glance at the control panel showed that the navigational controls including the FTL drive were out. At the rate they were going they'd be in pieces on the ground before he even had a chance to figure out what was wrong.

There was a beeping on his dashboard - Colonial signal, an Emergency Beacon from a Raptor. So Boomer and Racetrack _were_ here. He noted the position and tried to turn the Raptor towards the source. Nothing happened. He tried to pull up, lessen the angle of descent, but the closer they got to the planet the more the Raptor accelerated. He fired the reverse thrusters and noted that their speed decreased slightly, but still not enough. He did a quick sweep of the planet itself; Oxygen, Co2, gravity about the same as Caprica. No reason for the Raptor to be pulled down so fast.

'Sir, they've gone!' It was the Chief's voice, high pitched with an uncharacteristic note of panic. 'They just disappeared, I-'

Apollo shot a glance behind him. He'd been so caught up in flying the damn plane that he'd forgotten about the prisoners in the back. One quick look confirmed that the Raptor was empty except for the Chief, still standing there holding his sidearm uselessly by his side. _What the frak?_ He resisted the urge to leap up and search the back of the Rapter himself, instead turning back with a feeling of sinking dread, trying his best to ignore the warning signals inside his head telling him this was a trap and to get the frak out of there. Not that it would have helped any because there was no way they were going anywhere but down, and the best he could do was slow this crazy rush to the surface. In front of his cockpit there was only darkness. He took a deep calming breath and switched to night vision, trying to use the automated scanners to map their descent. But he could see it wasn't going to work.

'_Frak_!'

'What's up, Captain?' The Chief was still at the back of the Raptor, probably waiting for Desmond and Faraday to re-materialize. Maybe they were still there, just invisible and waiting to pounce. If he'd had any time at all he would have gone and checked it out, but as it was…

'Get yourself up here, Chief,' he shouted. He checked the altitude meter. They were descending fast, but the short range Dradus sweep wasn't working and he couldn't map the terrain at all. 'If I don't get some eyes here soon, we're going to have to bail!' The Chief slipped into the seat beside him, strapping himself in tight.

'We're coming in too fast, when we get to two thousand, we'll punch out.' He watched the altitude meter as the ground came up to meet them. One last attempt to slow their descent failed spectacularly. There was no way he could land the plane.

'You ready?' he shouted over the whine of the shuddering plane.

'Yeah.' Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Chief nod, swallowing hard in fear. At least the Chief was holding his nerve and he wasn't with some green ECO crapping his pants next to him.

'Ok. Three two one, Go!' On cue Apollo jerked on the eject handle and both seats flew up through the cockpit. The sudden rush took his breath away, making him gasp at the sudden change in temperature, the cool air rushing over his face. When he finally managed to breathe again he could smell the richness of unfiltered air – sea, wind, rain. He almost gulped it in, enjoying the cool feeling of the night on his face and hands. His parachute canopy opened, snapping his descent so that he was floating gently to the ground. In the darkness all he could see were the winking lights of the Raptor as it disappeared into the dark, then a huge ball of fire and a roar as it exploded. He winced as the fireball lit up the dark enough for him to check on the Chief. He could see him drifting down to the ground about fifty yards away, his chute was out, so it looked like he was OK. As the last light from the explosion faded he could see they were headed down into some sort of high ground, away from the trees. That was one good thing. The downer was that the explosion would alert any Toasters for miles. Once they hit the ground they'd have to get the hell out of there.

This had to be on Kobol - and he'd done enough sweeps of that planet to know that it was swarming with toasters. They needed to go South, try to find the Emergency Beacon and Boomer's Raptor and hopefully hook up with her and Racetrack. He hoped they'd had a better landing than he had because if they hadn't they were all royally screwed. And where the frak had Desmond and Faraday gone? It looked like his father had been right; the Cylons _did _have some sort of new technology. Maybe Desmond and Faraday _were _a new model who could somehow appear and disappear at will. Why hadn't he listened to his father? As if to emphasize his own stupidity misjudged his landing and hit the ground hard, collapsing in a winded heap before he managed to unclipped the buckles of his parachute. Then he passed out.

00000

'Where's my sidearm?'

The voice woke him. Sawyer squinted up at the entrance to his tent, groaning his way out of sleep. It was too early in the morning. And who was _this_? A woman stood framing the doorway, her blond hair reflecting the early morning sun.

He pushed up on one shoulder. 'Oh, it's you, little miss sleepy head. So you decided to wake up, did you?'

The form in front of him stiffened and the woman's voice spoke again in a low growl. 'Cut the crap. I want my sidearm and rumor has it you've got it.' Her voice was strong, firm. There was a glint in her eye.

'And rumor has it finders keepers.' He sat up and smiled at her, watching as her gaze flicked down to his bare chest. He tilted his head slightly and raised his eyebrows. She didn't react to being called out on it, just slowly brought up her eyes to meet his, raking up his body with no trace of embarrassment. OK, so this one wasn't all soft and kitteny like the other two. They locked eyes. No way was Sawyer backing down on this one. She watched him for a moment and then turned and walked away.

'Well, glad we sorted that one out,' he muttered and lay back down. A minute later he heard her again. With a sigh he kept his eyes closed and hoped she'd get the message and go away.

'Now, give me my sidearm or I'll blow your frakking head off.' He opened his eyes slowly. She was standing square in front of him, holding another one of those short stubby guns aimed at his head. OK, so this one wasn't messing, not like the two cute and cuddlies over there. He was beginning to wish she had stayed unconscious.

'I see you already got a gun, what you need mine for?'

There was a click. OK, so she wasn't messing.

'OK, _Reepacheek_, just hold your horses.' He reached slowly under his mattress and pulled out the gun, skidding it swiftly across the sand towards her. She never took her eyes off of him. This one was in a whole new league from the others. 'There you go. One _sidearm_.' He said with a forced smile.

She picked it up, flashed him a flirtatious grin and ducked out into the light. _Sonofabitch _she was hot. He ran his hand through his hair and stuck his head out of the tent flap, watching as she walked purposefully to where Boomer was lying. She handed Boomer back her gun and then holstered the one she'd gotten from him. With another long, hard look at him, she strode up the beach towards the buried plane. She moved like a cross between a cat and a prizefighter, swaggering smoothly with a roll to her hips. He liked it. She certainly had his attention anyway. He pulled on his shirt and jeans and sauntered up the beach after her, noticing her smile as she clocked him following her. He sat down on top of a heap of sand next to the plane. She had already hopped down to the underbelly of the plane and was busy crawling deep inside it.

'You're up early,' he said conversationally. She wasn't scared or surprised by his presence so he guessed she'd already had a long chat with either Boomer or Racetrack. They obviously hadn't flagged him up as a risk, which was a good thing. He was quite sure that if they'd had any doubts this one here wouldn't be looking so relaxed around him.

She looked over at him before turning back to the plane. 'Well, guess there's a lot to do.'

'Name's Sawyer.' He said.

'Yeah. I know.'

'You're Starbuck?'

'That's right.'

'So, you fly this thing?'

'That's the plan. If I can get it working.'

'It stinks.'

'Yeah, but you kind of get to like it after a while.' She flashed him another grin. _Nice_

'So, you're with the military?'

'Bought and paid for by your taxes – if you ever paid any. And sworn to protect you. Now, doesn't that make you feel a whole lot better?' Okay... so was she seriously saying they were regular US military? Maybe some sort of secret unit or something? He still wasn't sure Sayid would buy that one. Hell, he wasn't sure he did either.

She stood up and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. He could see the blood from the plane smearing across her face where her hands had been. She didn't seem to notice. Instead, she gave him a long hard stare, looking him over.

'So where you from?' she asked. There was a hint of aggression in the way she said it. He could see the suspicion behind her actions now.

'Jasper, Alabama.'

She shook her head, 'Never heard of it.' she said.

'Deep South – swamp country. What about you?'

'Oh, I dunno– on some frakking airbase somewhere. I was a military brat. We moved around a lot.' She turned her attention back to the Raider, 'Right little daddyo, let's see if you can fly. Stand back.' She said to him. She crawled back inside. He stepped back, watching intently. A couple of the others had joined them now. Sayid, Hugo and Charlie were standing silently to one side. He noticed Racetrack was there too. He could hear a faint swishing sound as the trapdoor under the Raider closed. Well, at least the electrics were working.

Hugo stood shaking his head in awe, 'Dude, this is so Sci-Fi, I mean, a living plane and that sliding hatch thing. Awesome.'

'It's a pity it stinks,' said Charlie, 'It doesn't stink in the movies.'

'That's just 'cos you can't smell it, man. This is genuine sci-fi stink.'

'Could you two just shut up?' Sawyer glanced over in irritation. 'This is our chance of getting off this Island. Show a bit of respect.'

'Yeah, Dude, Sawyer's right. This is, like, a reverential moment.' And he and Charlie stood solemnly staring at the plane until Charlie couldn't hold the laughter in anymore. Sawyer couldn't help grinning himself. He liked messing around with Charlie and Hurley. He'd so far just clocked Charlie as an uptight moan, but maybe there was more to the guy.

After a minute or so they'd sobered up and were standing quietly, willing the plane to move. After five minutes of nothing the hatch opened again and Starbuck re-emerged. This time there was blood and stink all over her. She smeared her hands down her pants. 'Nothing. Dead. I don't get it. Hey!' she turned irritably to the assembled crowd, 'This isn't a party!'

'Maybe there's too much sand?' suggested Hurley, 'Maybe it's like, blocking something somewhere?'

'Yeah,' she nodded, moving round the plane, 'You may be right.' She put her hands on her hips and grinned at them all. 'So we dig.' There was a groan. 'Hey! You want to get off of here or not?'


	24. Submarine

Chapter 24

Submarine

Juliet sat by the dock watching the supplies being loaded onto the sub. No one was in any rush, and the boxes of food and containers of fresh water had been left for hours sitting in the hot sun. It all seemed very half hearted. Simon and Jeffry were sitting playing cards at the end of the dock, pointedly ignoring her. Everyone was ignoring her. She hoped that Ben would see that her staying wasn't an option any more. Hell, she'd been branded – surely he would let her go now? She shivered. She'd never asked for all this – never asked to be part of it, never wanted to be one of Ben's crazy followers having to bend or break under his crazy draconian rules. She just wanted to go home.

Simon straightened and laughed, throwing a card down and shaking his head at something Jeffrey was saying. Juliet turned away, looking beyond them out to the ocean. She didn't know either of them very well, just well enough to know when she was being blanked. Not that it made a whole lot of difference. She'd always been lonely here, from the very first moment she'd stepped onto this Island. It was only Goodwin who… she took in a deep slow breath. She wasn't going to think about Goodwin. She couldn't afford to think about him, not at the moment anyway. She had to hold it together, and her memories of him were the one thing that would tear her apart.

She turned her attention back to the submarine instead. It would be leaving within the next couple of days. The only question was whether or not she would be on it when it did. She didn't dare hope, didn't dare open up to the possibility that this time next week she could be at home seeing Rachel - for _real _- and little Julian and… she could feel the tears welling up. She pushed them down firmly and tried to straighten out her face and her emotions. _NO_. Not yet. She wasn't going to crack. No weakness. And that meant that she couldn't let herself start to hope. Not until she was actually standing in her sister's house, holding her tight. Until then she couldn't let herself lose control.

'Hey.'

She looked up, startled out of her thoughts, her heart leaping to her throat.

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. May I?' Jack gestured to a spot beside her. She gave him an uncertain smile as he sat down heavily, drawing his knees up stiffly. He squinted out towards the end of the pier. 'That the sub?'

'Yes.' Her own voice sounded small and weak. She was so scared. She'd spent the last three years being scared – she'd been scared since she'd gotten to the Island; well the truth was she'd been scared even before then. She'd been scared when she was married to Edmund and once she'd arrived here she'd soon learnt to be scared of Ben too - and then she'd been scared every time one of the women had fallen pregnant and had died under her care. Yeah, she knew all about fear. But now she was more terrified than she'd ever been. Hope made her fear more intense, and after Goodwin… well, that had been bad enough. Seeing Goodwin's body, realizing what Ben was capable of and then, _then_ she'd made it a whole lot worse by asking Jack to kill Ben on the operating table. Ben would have heard about that by now. Add to that the fact that she'd shot and killed Danny to let Kate and James Ford escape, _oh god_, now, _now_ she was going insane with fear. And the closer she got to actually getting off this Island, the more her terror intensified. She felt as if the terror had taken up residence in the whole of her body and it was all she could do to hold herself steady and wait this one out. Only a few more days. Once Jack had fixed up Ben they would be on that sub.

She wanted Ben to get well. Ironic, huh? Well, no, she wanted him dead. His obsession with her had convinced her that she was only safe if he was gone. Permanently. But the deal was that if Jack fixed him up then Ben would let them both go, and suddenly here she was, fervently wishing him a speedy recovery. Which, of course, was exactly what Ben wanted. Ben always got what he wanted, regardless of who he destroyed in the process.

She shivered again, shooting a glance over at Jack. He was watching the boxes being loaded onto the submarine. Simon and Jeffrey had finished their card game and were finally moving again. Slowly. Jack grunted at something, maybe satisfied that the sub really was being prepared for their departure. When he sensed her watching him he flashed her a quick, reassuring smile.

'How's he doing?' she asked tentatively. She didn't have to ask who _he_ was.

'Another couple of days and I think it'll be safe to leave him.' Jack was nodding sincerely, his lips in a tight line. She took a deep breath and looked out at the sea beyond the sub.

'You think he'll go through with it?' Jack's voice was low, but she could hear the anxiety in his tone. 'You think he'll really let us go?'

She turned to him slowly, meeting his gaze. 'I don't know.' What was she supposed to say? That Ben might let Jack go, but there was no way in hell Ben would allow _her_ to leave? She shuddered, remembering Ben's words as she'd stood, numb and horrified, staring at what was left of Goodwin. '_After everything I've done to get you here. After everything I've done to keep you here, how can you possibly not understand that you're mine?'_

_mine_

_mine_

_mine_

Ben's words still echoed in her mind, chilling her to her core. 'I don't trust him,' she murmured quietly.

Jack grunted, jiggling some stones in his hand as he followed her gaze out to the horizon. 'He gave his word, but I'm guessing that doesn't count for much.'

She smiled. 'I've been here three years. I was only supposed to stay six months... Ben gets what he wants, Jack.'

He nodded in acknowledgment of her words, but his jaw was set hard. 'Well, not this time.' She saw him take a deep breath. Didn't he realize that Ben still held all the cards? Didn't he know that once Ben had recovered Jack would lose all his bargaining power? He had no idea who he was up against.

'How'd you get here in the first place?' Jack was asking her. 'I mean did he force you-'

'No.' she gave a bitter laugh. 'I was recruited. Head hunted. Told what marvelous work I did. And you know? I believed them. Well, I wanted to believe them. Even then I realized something was off.' she paused. 'Can you believe it? They told me they lived in Portland.' She gave a dry, cynical laugh.

He didn't laugh with her, just shook his head with a small smile, a token to her stupidity and naivety.

'You're a fertility doctor, though, right?'

She nodded.

'So, why would they want a fertility doctor?'

'Because the women here keep dying.' she swallowed hard, staring at a fixed point on the horizon. 'I've lost eight patients in the last three years. Eight fit, healthy young women. They keep dying, and I can't figure out why.'

He was quiet for a moment. He was a doctor. He knew what it was like to lose patients - he was a surgeon, for god's sakes, he had patients die all the time. That just came with the territory. Patients died on operating tables. Which was why she'd gone into obstetrics; she wanted to be part of life, not death. Her patients weren't supposed to die.

'So – is it something about the Island, or-' she could see his clinical mind working now and she took a deep breath and matched his tone, automatically moving smoothly into her own version of the perfect professional.

'We think so. Something happened before I came here. They call it _The Purge_. It looks as if a substance was released into the environment that may be affecting the immunity of everyone on the island, and the enhanced immune response may explain why the mothers reject the fetus - but it doesn't explain the degradation of the womb or why the women die.'

'But Claire had her baby and Aaron's fine…'

'Yeah. We know. Ethan – well, Ethan was using her as a control to try and figure out what was different and-'

'And he just thought he'd kidnap her and string Charlie up to a tree while he was at it?' She could feel the rage rising in him. His voice went tight. 'Were you part of that too, Juliet?'

She smiled sadly, 'No. I wasn't. Ethan did that on his own.' She hesitated, wondering how much to say. She was so used to not saying anything, to compartmentalizing all the bits of information she picked up. But Jack had to trust her, he had to know that she hadn't been part of what had happened to Claire. 'Look, when you found out that he wasn't one of the crash survivors Ethan panicked, and then took matters into his own hands. And no, I wasn't there and-'

What was she supposed to say? That she'd been as horrified as Jack? She had only heard about Claire later from a distraught Alex. Alex had come to her in tears and told her that she'd let Claire escape. She had said that Ethan had been going to cut the baby out and then chop up Claire's body afterwards. Juliet had no idea if this was true or not, but from what she had heard, Claire had been healthy and the baby had been doing fine. She'd been well into the Third Trimester and due to deliver in a week or so. There should have been no need for a Caesarian Section.

But what could she say to Jack, patiently looking at her and expecting a response. Tell him the truth? Probably. But for some reason she couldn't get the words out. This Island had changed her beyond recognition. She was so used to keeping quiet. Had she really so completely lost her own moral compass that Ethan's actions didn't surprise her anymore? She'd gotten so used to just accepting what went on here, swallowing her feelings of helplessness, and moving on, hoping that one day she'd make it back home alive and then she'd be able to start to feel again.

'-and what, Juliet?' he prompted her.

And what? She couldn't even remember the beginning of the sentence now. Like Goodwin, Jack was decent and true and – oh damn, Goodwin again. She didn't want to think about Goodwin. Or talk about anything that these people did. She just wanted to go home.

Jack was watching her expectantly, still waiting for an answer. She wasn't used to having conversations with someone who wasn't playing the game. Usually the other person would notice her hesitation and then drop the subject quickly, guessing that this was an area that they were better not knowing about.

She opened her mouth to speak, the panic forming around her words as she tried to formulate her thoughts. She didn't want to talk about Ethan. She didn't want to talk about any of them.

'Jack, I'm sorry, I-' The sputtering of a motor boat engine drowned out her words. Both she and Jack turned to the source of the noise. There was nothing to see yet, but soon the sounds of the motor grew louder. She watched Jack stand to get a better look. A small motor boat rounded the bay. She recognized Tom's figure in the wheelhouse and Steve standing at the prow waiting to throw the line. When it pulled up alongside the quay, Tom was talking on his walkie. He obviously wasn't getting much response as he shook his head in frustration before he roughly clicked the thing off and marched out of the cabin. He joined Steve at the prow, helping him lift something and drag it out of the boat. With a shock she realised it was the body of a man, dressed in some sort of military uniform. She glanced over at Jack nervously. Jack was standing stiffly, frowning as he watched a second body being hauled off the launch and dumped unceremoniously on the dock.

She felt her heart fluttering in alarm. Whatever this was, she knew it wasn't good. Her chance of getting off this Island demanded nothing out of the ordinary, nothing for Ben to latch onto. Nothing for Ben to use as a reason for going back on his word. Her one hope was that everyone had seen Ben promise to let her go, and she knew he couldn't afford to lose face, not at the moment, not with all the new people from the plane. They were still nervous and frightened and needed the reassurance that they weren't being held here as prisoners after all. Even though she knew that in all intents and purposes they were. None of them were going home.

Letting her and Jack go was, at best, a PR exercise, a concession Ben been forced to make because Jack had told him he'd let him die otherwise. And once he was better, the only thing holding him to his agreement were the watchful eyes of the new additions to his group of followers, who were, understandably, suspicious and wary. Ben could do with some proof that people _did_ actually leave this godawful place. It was the one slim hope she clung onto - that her departure might suit him. But she also knew that Ben didn't want either of them to leave.

And now, here was something that could wreck the whole plan. She wasn't sure how Ben would weave these two bodies into his games but she was sure he would. And that thought filled her with despair.


	25. Military Issues

Chapter 25

Military Issues

Jack watched as the two bodies were dropped unceremoniously onto the wooden deck. He felt Juliet tense behind him. She was still sitting quietly by the quay, making no move to get up. Without a second thought he stepped forward, bending down automatically to check if the two men were still alive. Both had a strong pulse; unconscious, not dead. Had they been knocked senseless or drugged? He examined them quickly, expertly checking for any injuries. One already had a bandage over the side of his head, which from the look of it had been there a while. He resisted the temptation to take a look at the wound, but by the size of the dressing he guessed he'd find stitches under there. The two men were both young, mid to late twenties, wearing military uniforms. One of them was obviously the pilot, the other was dressed in ordinary green military fatigues. He leant back on his heels and looked up to find Tom staring down at him.

'They were out cold when we found 'em,' Tom said, almost apologetically.

'Who are they?' Jack tried to pitch his voice as neutral as he could.

Tom shrugged. 'Beats me. We just found 'em in the jungle.'

'Military.' Jack said the words quietly, figuring out what the implications were.

'Looks like it. Ben ain't gonna like it one bit.' Tom shook his head ruefully and then gestured to the men hanging around the dock. They grabbed the two men roughly by their arms and began to drag them up the jetty.

Jack stood up and took a step back. 'What are you going to do with them?'

Tom looked over at him uncertainly. 'I guess we'll let Ben figure that one out. C'mon boys, let's get them inside.' Jack watched for a moment as the two men were dragged up the pier towards the houses. He'd built up some sort of rapport with Tom. Not that he trusted him, but of all _The Others_ he'd met, Tom still seemed the most human. Excepting Juliet, of course. But he'd only gotten to know her once he'd realized that she wanted to get off this Island at least as much as he did, if not more. He looked over to where she was sitting. She hadn't moved, but now her body was laced with tension and there was fear in her eyes.

'Who are they?' he asked, watching her carefully.

'I have no idea.' He saw her compose herself, expertly sliding her emotions away. When she finally met his eyes all signs of her fear were gone. She had a way of holding her gaze just so, making the other person want to babble like an idiot to relieve the tension while she watched impassively. But Jack had never been one for babbling, and silences weren't uncomfortable for him so he returned the stare.

'Tom said Ben wouldn't like it. What does that mean?'

'It means he won't like it,' she said enigmatically, 'There's been a …' she paused, '_history_ with the military - before I got here. But I've heard them talk about it.'

'And what do they say?'

He saw her choosing her words again. He knew she was holding out on him. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. 'I'm sorry.' He almost cursed with frustration. Just as he thought he was making some sort of connection with her, she disappears again.

'So what'll happen to them?' he asked impatiently.

'I don't know, Jack.' That impassive stony stare again. He flicked his eyes back up the path towards the houses. His plan had been to get on that submarine and bring back help for the rest of the survivors, but that plan involved Ben Linus letting them go and then hoping all went to plan for however long it took to get back home in the submarine. These pilots could represent their best hope of rescue yet - they had to be part of a larger force with radio and satellite equipment. Ignoring Juliet, he strode after them, noting carefully where they were taken before he peeled off towards the house they'd given him. He quickly collected his medical bag and made a point of walking past the house they'd gone into, but the door was firmly shut and he couldn't hear anything. He guessed Tom would be reporting to Ben, so he clutched onto his medical bag and strode purposefully into Ben's house.

Ben was lying on his side, his back exposed to the air. 'Time for you check up.' Jack kept his voice brisk and professional, putting the bag down next to the bed before going over to the sink in the kitchen to wash his hands.

'Am I supposed to be able to move my legs yet, Jack?' Ben called out from the sitting room in a plaintive voice.

Jack came back into the room, drying his hands on a paper towel. 'No. There's too much swelling and it's pressing on the nerves. We won't know the extent of the damage until that goes down.' He bent down and gently peeled back the bandage, peering at the wound underneath. 'The good news it, it's no longer infected.'

He felt Ben's sigh of relief. 'You've done a good job, Jack.'

'Well,' he said, straightening up and reaching for a clean bandage from his bag, 'I told you I'd keep you alive.'

'And I appreciate it, Jack. I really do.' Ben's voice quivered with sincerity. 'I had them lie me this way so I could look out of the window. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?' Jack wasn't sure where this was going, but he'd realised that Ben didn't make small talk for the sake of it. He waited for him to get to the point.

'I hear the sub arrived,' he said in the same tone. OK, so they were going to talk about him leaving. Good.

'Yeah, they're unloading stuff from it now.' Jack replied. 'Another couple of days and you won't need me anymore.'

'Aren't you dying to see me walk, Jack?'

He smiled, gave a tight laugh, wondering about Ben's unfortunate choice of words. 'No Ben, I'm not. And you don't need me for that. It's just a matter of taking it slow.'

The front door slammed.

'Who is it?' cried Ben, still lying on his side with his back to the door.

'It's Tom.' Jack bent down again to examine the half healed stitches along Ben's spine. He'd done a good job on these.

'Well?' asked Ben impatiently. Jack glanced up to see Tom standing there awkwardly. He was looking curiously at Jack.

Jack ignored him, busying himself with putting some cream and a new bandage on the line of stitches. Ben hissed in pain.

'Sorry.' Jack pulled back a little. 'This might sting a little.'

'There's been an… _incident_.' Tom said uncertainly, moving round to where Ben could see him. He looked pointedly at Jack.

'Jack?' said Ben wearily. 'Would you excuse us?'

'Of course. I was finished here anyway.' Jack nodded to Tom and then moved back into the kitchen to wash his hands. He closed the door but stood behind it, his ear pressed up against the wood.

'Military? Where from?' it was Ben's voice.

'We don't know. We found them laid out in the jungle, they ain't come round yet.'

'And where are they now?'

'In the Club Room.'

'The Club Room? –'

'I tried to get you on the walkie, but you weren't answering...'

'I was probably asleep.' Ben's voice had a martyred edge to it. 'I suppose half the camp saw them come in?'

There was an awkward silence as Tom uncomfortably cleared his throat.

'Why didn't you wait until dark?'

'I'm sorry, I-'

'No matter. It's done. Move them to the jungle tonight, but be subtle about it, the new people are jittery enough as it is. If anyone asks, say they've been taken to the Hydra. Then find out what the hell they're doing here.'

'And if they don't talk?'

He heard Ben give another impatient sigh, 'Well, I can think of only a handful of reasons why they might be here – none of them good. So frankly it's immaterial whether they talk or not.' He sighed again. 'Put it this way, it would be nice to know.'

Jack moved quietly back to the kitchen and out through the side door. He'd heard enough. He crossed the compound, and once inside his own house he washed his hands thoroughly, then he sat down at the piano to give himself time to think. He knew there was a camera in the corner of the room and he knew he was being watched. He idly pressed on the keys, playing out a simple tune he'd learnt as a kid, letting his fingers automatically spell out the notes while he thought through what to do next.

He was smart enough to know that he had only been able to hold Ben to this agreement because Ben's life had been in immediate danger. It had been a shock to find out that Juliet had been trying to leave for three years. If that was the case then what were the real chances of Ben letting them go? He'd given himself two more days here, but it didn't look like those pilots would be around that long. He ran through the possibilities of who they might be; they could be part of a search mission to try and locate the survivors from their flight, or they could have randomly crashed here. Either way someone would come looking for them. He could understand why they were such a threat to Ben's empire. There was no way Ben's behaviour would stand up in a court of a law. The man was a criminal and he knew it. That meant that Ben had a real investment in making sure that he and Juliet remained here. And Ben would want the pilots out of the way too. Simple, really.

He got up and walked across the compound, glancing over at the Clubhouse. There was no sign of anyone, though he knew the pilots were being held inside. If there was someone guarding them, which he presumed there was, then they were inside as well. Ben was trying to keep it very low key – for the benefit of the new people - those they'd taken from the tail section of the plane. And from what he'd overheard, the new people were jittery and Ben wanted to reassure them. _That_, Jack realized, was his only bargaining tool. The people from the plane needed to think that Ben was a benign leader. And Jack suspected that Ben's desire to maintain that façade was the only reason he would keep his word and let him and Juliet go.

00000

A sharp pain pulled him awake. He could hear voices, muffled sounds through the buzzing in his ears. He opened his eyes then shut them again quickly. The room was spinning, at least he thought it was a room, the quick snapshot as he blinked his eyes open had revealed paint peeled walls, windows, shapes that might have been people. He tried again, squinting in light that was too bright for the throbbing pain in his head. He heard more voices, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.

It wasn't so much the pain in his arm that caught his attention, but the fact that he was handcuffed tightly to something on the floor. He was lying awkwardly on his side, his hands cuffed behind him. For the umpteenth time he thought ruefully that his father had been right. This was a trap. Desmond and Faraday had conveniently disappeared just before the Raptor had lost control and now he was being held prisoner. He tried to shift his weight a little off his trapped arm. They'd certainly chained him up good. He experimentally opened his eyes again. Gods he was thirsty. He ran his tongue over dry lips. It was hot here, even hotter trapped in his flying suit. He wondered vaguely whether the Chief had been captured too, moving his head slowly and carefully to see if he was anywhere near. He could see him handcuffed to some window bars, his arm pulled up at an awkward angle. Apollo could see the marks where the cuffs were cutting in. So far it didn't look like the intentions of their captors were anything good.

There was a guard by the door, a man wearing shabby clothes and a long, thin rifle leaning against the wall. The guard caught his eye and said something. It didn't sound like anything Apollo had ever heard before. He stared blankly back at him, watching as the guard took out a small black box and began speaking into it. Apollo glanced over at Chief Tyrol. He was awake, staring back at him. Their eyes locked in silent understanding. At least the Chief had the good sense to realize what was going on. Apollo wished now that he'd pushed him out of the damn Raptor while they were still on Galactica.

The door opened and two more men slipped quietly into the room. He flashed the Chief another look, an unspoken agreement that neither of them would give away Galactica's position. The Raptor had exploded, and as a precaution he'd wiped the flight log before they'd jumped, so the only trail back to Galactica was through them. One of the men stepped towards him and said something. It was a language Apollo had never heard before, guttural and strange. But he didn't have to understand the words to grasp exactly what was going on with the man's body language. Apollo met his eyes as directly as he could and braced himself. The blow when it came wasn't so bad. Not as bad has his father's right hook when they were sparring. Apollo shut his eyes and imagined it was just another work out, he and his father, gloves on, the blows nothing more than his fathers' killer punches.

The beating stopped almost before it had begun. Unless they had more up their sleeve this was the most pitiful interrogation that he'd ever been on the receiving end of. He opened his eyes. The one in charge was big and looked older than the others – as if he was around 50 or so. Not that age meant anything to Cylons. He watched anxiously as they moved towards Chief Tyrol. Apollo winced as they caught the side of the Chief's head and the bullet wound he'd picked up on Kobol. He tried not to react. It wouldn't help the Chief any if they used him to make Apollo talk. Neither of them said anything. They both kept to the protocol. They knew that silence was their most potent defense in this sort of interrogation. The Chief was chained at an awkward angle, his arm forced up to the window grate. He couldn't absorb the blows as easily in that position. Apollo cursed himself again for ever letting him come along.

The older man said something and the two others stood back as he pulled out some rags from his pocket and stepped forward, forcing the cloth into his mouth before tying it tightly behind his head. The cloth tasted foul and he resisted the urge to gag. Vomiting wasn't going to help him any. Instead he took two deep breaths and watched as the Cylon gagged the chief and then stepped back. Apollo met his gaze, glaring at him defiantly. The bigger one turned to the others with him, said something else and then left, leaving the guard to take up his position by the door. Apollo glanced across at the Chief. His eyes were shut and Apollo could see that the cut was bleeding freely now. He must have sensed Apollo watching him because he opened his eyes and nodded once, letting him know that he was OK.

00000

Jack sat quietly on his veranda playing cards, waiting for Tom to come out of the Clubhouse. He'd spent the last three hours wandering around the compound, keeping an anxious eye on the Clubroom. He'd pretended to be just hanging out, speaking quietly to one or two of the people he found there and trying to look as innocent as possible.

Finally he'd watched as Tom and another man had walked quickly up to the Clubhouse door and gone inside. Jack had waited on the veranda of his house idly playing a game of cards. Sure they'd been quiet about it, and sure they didn't stay long, but when they finally emerged from the Clubhouse he saw the man with Tom flexing his right hand as he passed them and Jack could see traces of blood on his knuckles. Something in him snapped. In less than a minute he was at Ben's house.

As he stepped through the door he could hear Tom giving his report.

'Didn't say a word, nope, got nothing out of them…' he stopped as he saw Jack.

'Who are the two men locked in the Clubhouse?' Jack demanded without any preamble.

Ben gave an exaggerated sigh. 'Really, Jack, this is none of your-'

'Who are they?' he raised his voice now.

Ben turned his head and winced, 'We don't know, Jack. They won't tell us.'

'And what are you going to do with them?'

'Again, Jack, none of your business.'

'I want to see them,' he said suddenly, 'I'm a doctor and I want to see them.'

'Do you want to get off this Island or not?' Ben flashed angrily.

Jack gave a cynical half laugh, 'I'm going to see them, examine them and then I am going to get on that sub and leave this Island. Or do you want me to tell everyone in this compound that the military have come to rescue them but you are hiding them away?'

There was a pause. He could practically see Ben's mind whirring through the implications. Jack was counting on the fact that the other survivors from flight 815 weren't quite the docile _'__Others_ that Ben was claiming. He was quite sure that Ben had given them some lie about why they couldn't just leave the Island right now and go back to their lives. He waited as Ben fluttered his eyelids in a sort of mock exasperation.

'OK Jack. You can examine them.' Ben spoke slowly, enunciating each word as if he was talking to a child, 'But if you try anything, or say anything, you won't be going anywhere on that sub and the deal is off.'

With an effort Jack unclenched his jaw and nodded. Ben waved at Tom, who clicked on his walkie.

'Bill? Yeah. The Doc's coming across to check the prisoners. Yeah. I'm with Ben. Yeah. OK.'

Tom clicked off the walkie and looked at Jack with an appreciative half smile.


	26. The Right Connections

Chapter 26

The Right Connections

Starbuck lay in the guts of the Raider trying to figure out what in hell she was doing wrong. Everything checked out the same – all the Raider's controls seemed physically fine and she was doing the exact same thing she'd done every time she got the Raider to fly, but now there was nothing. No response at all. Was it the crash? But hell, she'd gotten out alive, and maybe the landing had been a little bumpy, but nothing the Raider couldn't handle. She sighed and rubbed her hands over her eyes, trying not to smear more of the bloody goo all over her face. She was sure the Raider's smell had gotten worse, like the whole thing was rotting now. Sure it smelled like a latrine before, but this was more like decomposing meat. That couldn't be good. And OK, so she had no idea how any of this worked, but she was beginning to suspect that the Raider hadn't actually been _dead_ before, and they'd only got it to fly because there was enough life left in it to still function. But now, now it looked like the frakking thing had really died.

Which was frakking great.

She leaned forward on her elbows and gave another frustrated sigh, chewing her lip in frustration. She'd been counting on getting the Raider back in the air, flying back to Galactica (and OK, she hadn't been looking forward to facing the Old Man again, but what the hell), getting a rescue party down here and then – well, she hadn't gotten that far. And then being locked up in the Brig for disobeying a direct order and jumping away in the first place. Now she'd had more time to think about it, Laura's Roslin's idea of getting hold of the Arrow of Apollo and opening the tomb of Athena on Kobol and it magically showing them the way to Earth seemed completely dumb. It had probably always been dumb, but when she'd found out the Old Man had lied about Earth, she'd had to do something. She'd been so mad at him. Looking back now, though, she could see how the President had played her, knowing she was reckless enough to actually go and do it. And now she'd had a chance to cool down, well, maybe the Old Man had his reasons. He always had his reasons. She should know that by now. She'd been too angry to even have it out with him, and then things had moved so fast… _frack_.

She'd screwed up.

At least Boomer and Racetrack had managed to take out that Base Star. Racetrack said they'd been here at for six days, which was crazy because Starbuck had jumped away before Boomer and Racetrack had even got in that Raptor to take out the Base Star. The people on the beach said the Raider had crashed the night before and that she'd spent one night trapped inside and another unconscious once they'd gotten her out. That was two days, max. Which meant… yeah, four days unaccounted for.

She remembered jumping away from Galactica. She remembered coming out of the jump and losing control of the Raider. She remembered ditching into the sea, flying under the water and crashing into the beach. She even remembered passing out. So somebody was lying about what had happened those four days. Now why would the people here do that? Boomer and Racetrack had seen her being taken out of the Raider, and from what they said, the people here hadn't known how to get the Raider's hatch open to get her out, which meant that she must have spent four days inside. Two days without water and the body begins to shut down. Four? Frak, she'd be nearly dead. No way.

She eased herself onto her elbow. It was hot. Really hot. The sun was baking onto the Raider, and it looked like the environmental controls weren't working because she was beginning to fry. There was no way in hell she would have survived in here for four days. Someone was lying. So what were the people here, Cylons? Maybe. Cylons playing dumb about the Raider. Unless she'd lost the time someplace else. Maybe there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. But what were these people doing here anyway? This was way beyond the Red Line. They said that they'd crashed, that something had thrown them way off course and they had no clue how they wound up here. At least that had been the explanation they'd given her.

It sounded like a pile of crap.

Though she had to admit that she had no idea how she'd ended up here either. She'd carefully planned the whole route to Caprica so she wouldn't go near any planets. She'd used Gaeta's star charts and no way did he ever make mistakes like this. Maybe she'd messed up and written the coordinates down wrong – but even then, what were the chances of ending up here on Kobol on some tiny bum wipe Island with Boomer and Racetrack? The Raider must have malfunctioned – or been zapped by some Cylon virus that had kicked in when she jumped away from Galactica. No way was her ending up here some sort of freak accident. And how the Raider had behaved once they'd hit atmosphere – hell, it was like the damn thing was being pulled down to the surface, like there was something on this Island pulling it in.

So maybe the same thing had happened to the people they'd found here already. Maybe they'd made a jump and found themselves here. Or not.

Maybe they were Cylons, but then why hadn't they just killed her and Boomer and Racetrack straight off? Why wait? Maybe this was a trap and Starbuck and the others were the bait to get to Galactica and the fleet. Maybe they'd disabled the Raider to keep them here. But that didn't work – surely they'd want her to get back to Galactica. In their place she would have bugged the Raider and used it to track the fleet. In which case, why wouldn't the frakking Raider _work?_

It didn't add up and her head was beginning to hurt. She was just going round and round in circles.

And where the hell was Apollo anyway? Boomer and Racetrack had taken out the Base Star, which meant Galactica should be able to send a Rescue team to get them out. Racetrack said they'd set up the Emergency Beacon by the Raptor and that it had been working fine for at least a day, which should have given Apollo enough time to get his ass over there and get them out. Apollo was a good CAG. If there had been a chance of finding them, he'd have been on it. Which meant something else must have happened. Maybe another Base Star had moved in. In which case it wouldn't be long before the whole place would be swarming with frakking toasters. Either that or the Beacon wasn't working.

She'd hoped to be able to get the Raider in the air and get back to Galactica without having to go near Boomer's Raptor. Boomer had said they'd been attacked, and that the Raptor was too beat up to fly again, so she'd mentally crossed it off her list of possibilities. But if the Raider wasn't going to work she'd have to go check out the Beacon, maybe bring it back here. Walking into a whole bunch of frakking toasters wasn't her idea of a good time.

She couldn't believe the Raider had just rolled over and died. Apart from the smell, it looked just the same. But no power. Except for the hatch. A glimmer of something occurred to her. The Raider's hatch was still working, so there had to be some power. Maybe the whole thing had just short circuited or something. If she could get hold of one of the power packs off the Raptor, maybe she give it enough of a jolt to get it started again. It was a long shot, but worth a try. Somehow she had to get this thing in the air. OK, so she'd check out all the systems one more time, run through the whole test circuit she'd figured out with the Chief on Galactica and if the Raider still didn't work she'd have to think about making a trip to the Raptor. She wasn't giving up yet. One more go. _Frak_, she'd even try talking to the damn thing if she thought that would work.

00000

Boomer felt a hand gently touching the bandage on her face. She was dreaming, dreaming of those Sharons again. She lay quietly, waiting to wake up, feeling the sleep sloughing off her as the sounds and smells of the beach became more real. She fluttered her eyelids open, waiting for the dream hand to go back to wherever it had come from.

'Does it hurt?' She heard the voice and her eyelids snapped open. The hand pulled away and she found herself looking into eyes that looked liked hers, the same almond shape, the same skin color, the same hair. With a start she pulled back. _Frak, they'd found her_. For a moment she thought this was it, this was the end of it all, this was another Sharon staring down at her. But then the voice spoke again, 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I'm Sun.' The woman gave her name with a little bow and a nod of her head. With a rush of relief, Boomer realised that this was the woman who had taken Starbuck into her tent and looked after her. And then she remembered - she wasn't a Cylon. It had all been a trick. She was human.

_Human_.

_Sick_ and human.

She gave the woman a watery smile, suddenly feeling so grateful for still being alive.

'I'm sorry I woke you. It's time to take another one of these. Here,' the woman produced a pill bottle half full of small white pills. 'We need to deal with that infection.'

She nodded wordlessly, took the pill with a swig of water and lay back down again. Sun smiled at her and got up quietly, patting her once on the shoulder and giving her a little squeeze of reassurance. She had a grace and ease about her that Boomer found comforting. Apart from just scaring the frak out of her, there was something about her that just made her feel at ease. She brushed her hand across her face, feeling the bandage still there. Her face was on fire. She had to admit she didn't feel so good; the fever was burning through her whole body. It looked like that bullet through her face was going to finish her off after all.

She must have dozed off again because when she woke up the sun was high in the sky. She could hear the sounds of the camp around her, people going about their tasks, tiny slivers of normality. She had to admit she loved to see the sun, feel the wind on her face, the sounds of the sea. It was beautiful here. She took another one of the pills and stood up slowly. Her body was stiff and sore and she could still feel the fever coursing through her, but she felt better for the sleep. She got up, tentatively testing her legs to make sure they would hold her, walking on wobbly legs to makeshift latrine they had rigged up a little way away from the camp. She felt better for the walk, and came back past the shore, enjoying the sun and the sight of the waves crashing onto the sand, taking deep breaths and looking far out to the horizon. There wasn't much of a view on Galactica, and even in a Raptor she was mostly looking down at the instrument panel. The blackness of space didn't offer much to stare at, but here, now, this was something.

'Pretty, ain't it?' she turned to find Sawyer by her side. She gave a twitch of a smile and nodded. 'Feelin' better?'

'A little.' She gave him another shy half smile and looked over his shoulder to where the Raider was lying prone on the beach. She could see Starbuck standing beside it talking to Sayid. She looked pissed. But then Starbuck always looked pissed. She watched as Starbuck turned and headed back to the camp, Sayid close on her heels.

Sawyer caught the direction of her gaze and swung around. 'Looks like that thing won't fly – can't say I'm surprised, it's the weirdest machine I've ever seen.'

Boomer stared at the Raider. She hadn't gone near it again, but something about the way it was lying just made her feel so sad, so sorry for it. She didn't want it to die - and not because she wanted to use it to get off of here, she just, well, she didn't want it dead.

'Starbuck's been trying to get it goin' all day. She don't give up easy though, do she?'

Boomer smiled, looking over to where Starbuck was grabbing food from the kitchen area. Racetrack was with her now and they were deep in conversation. She watched as they both glanced over at her. She sighed. If they couldn't get the Raider working, then what? She had no idea. She turned her attention back to the Raider. It was lying there all alone now. She hoped it wasn't lonely. Before she realized what she was doing she found herself walking towards it. Just curious. She wanted to touch it, to feel it's sides. Something about it just called to her, like wanting to pet a sick dog or a cat, to offer it a little comfort, to feel it's sleek hull under her fingers.

Most of the sand had been uncovered now, just leaving the Raider standing proud in a scooped out basin. She touched it's flank, gently running her hand over it's gray edges. She bent down to where the hatch was still open, glancing back to where Starbuck was eating with Sayid and Racetrack. Sawyer was watching her, his hands in his pockets, a faint smile on his face.

'It stinks, don't it?' he said conversationally.

She returned his grin with a fake smile and shook her head. It shouldn't smell like this, she knew that. Like her, it was sick. The poor thing, it seemed so battered and bruised. She knew just how that felt. She shut her eyes and steadied herself against it's strong side, leaning into it like an old friend. It felt like an old friend. She bent down into the hatch and touched the edge of it's flesh. She shuddered when she saw what had been done to it, how it's insides had been cut and hacked…she instinctively reached up for a long sinew and gently held it in her hands, closing her eyes and trying to convey how sorry she was that all this had happened to the poor creature… she tenderly held the tentacle thing for a moment, her eyes closed. Then she brought it slowly up to her face, gently touching it to her check. She had no idea why, she felt the need for some sort of contact, to offer some comfort, some support, maybe show it how she was hurt too, and that she understood a little of what it was going through. She pressed it to her wounded face and breathed deeply, her eyes tightly closed, mentally relaxing into the feel of the alien flesh on her burning face.

The jolt, when it came, almost threw her backwards. There was a sudden arc of something, a spark, an electric shock that careered into her head, blinding her with a flash of white, like some sun exploding deep inside of her. She felt her knees giving way and she slumped onto the Raider's sides, crying out in pain.

And then it started. Like something was igniting in her brain, like some weird spark was firing across from her to the Raider and back again. It was like nothing she'd ever experienced before. Suddenly strings of numbers starting flashing through her mind, faster and faster. She felt a moment of panic and tried to pull back, but she couldn't let go of the tentacle, instead she found herself holding it tighter to her face, hanging on to it like it was the only thing keeping her in place. She felt a huge shudder run through her whole body. It felt like something was kick starting her whole goddamn system, pouring wave after wave of flesh and numbers through her mind, her hands, her whole body, firing through her and the Raider like they were joined in some sort of circuit.

And suddenly everything became eerily clear; she was part of the Raider, she _was_ the Raider. She could feel her awareness expanding, a sense of calm and order exploding from her as she suddenly saw it all so clearly. It was beautiful. The Raider was more beautiful on the inside than anything she had ever seen, there was an elegance, a sense of _rightness_ that took her breath away. She opened herself further to it, allowing her whole being to become it, to mould, to meld, until the boundaries between them were totally gone. She was the Raider, she was the broken creature, and in her mind, in her being she realized she had the tools to heal it, to bring back the pristine perfection.

She could see so clearly what she had to do, she could feel the parts of her that the Raider needed, the numbers and shapes that would bring the creature back to itself. She found herself moving through the connection, repairing, realigning, rebooting. She was moving through all the Raider's systems, using her own mind to bring the Raider back to life. She felt a rush of pleasure as numbers streamed out of her. _God _they were beautiful, the numbers were red, the color of flesh, and blue and indigo, violet, all colors, all textures, and they had a landscape all their own. She shaped them like a symphony and molded them to pull the Raider's broken parts back together again.

After the initial rush, the euphoria still coursing through her, she paused and listened, feeling the state of the Raider, noting how damaged and bruised it was, feeling it's pain and weakness. She had to fix that hatch. The Raider's hatch could be manually opened so that it could be repaired if it returned injured, but that had been set up with Cylons in mind, not with the assumption that it would fall into enemy hands. Now she quickly reformatted the code, adjusting the setting so that the Raider could lock the hatch from the inside. No one would violate it again. With a snap she was done. She could sense the Raider humming with new life, she could feel the first fluttering of it's waking consciousness. She carefully placed the tendril onto the floor of the ship and saw with satisfaction how it began to snake slowly from side to side, searching for it's connecting half. She stepped back and smiled when the hatch closed shut, locking her out.

'Hey, you OK?' Sawyer was bending down, his face full of concern. 'You yelled out. You hurt?'

She looked down at the Raider, then round at the beach, confused. What the hell had just happened? Everything looked just the same, on the outside. She put her hand to her head. What was that? She took a staggered step backwards, falling onto the sand behind her. She felt Sawyer's arms helping her up as she looked around, confused and horrified.

'Hey, you looked a little out of it there for a coupla seconds.' Sawyer's voice held a note of amusement and concern.

She looked up at him in panic, her eyes snapping open as the memories began to flood in. _Oh no. Oh no_. She gave out a strangled cry.

_No_. This wasn't right.

She could remember it all. Galactica. The fuses, the bomb. It had been her.

_No._

She remembered it now. She remembered everything. She felt herself crumpling as the memories began to flood her mind. Pictures and images. Cavall. Cylons. Sharons. Oh god. She was a Cylon. She was a frakking Cylon. She remembered now. She remembered it all.

She remembered being a Cylon, she remembered being recruited as a sleeper agent, the room that Cavall had set up for them, the talk he had given them, but… it still didn't seem real. It still didn't seem like _her._ It was as if someone else had put all these memories into her brain and not one of them belonged to her. She was Sharon Valerii, born on Picon, a member of Galactica's crew. Not a frakking Cylon agent. Even with all these alien memories pouring through her, she still didn't feel like a Cylon. _Dammit_, she didn't _want_ to be a Cylon. She wanted her life back, the life she knew on Galactica, with all the people she cared about and who cared about her. The life she had efore she'd turned out to be a frakking Cylon. She held her head in both hands, trying to rip out the confusion, pulling on her hair in an attempt to tear the memories out of her mind. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. This wasn't what he'd said it would be like. Cavall had told her she'd wake up and realize she'd been a hero. Cavall was a frakking liar.

'Look, you wanna lie down?' Sawyer had her arm and was bending over her, his face full of concern. 'You better take it easy until those pills kick in. You're burnin' up. Here, let's get you some water and get you into the shade.' He led her back to the shelter they'd made for her. She numbly lay down, her head throbbing like it was about to explode. She closed her eyes tight against the images and scenes still coursing through her mind. She lay there in agony, powerless against the searing memories. She didn't dare move or speak, her whole being was filled with the horror of what she really was. Eventually her body gave in for her and she descended into a restless sleep, full of numbers and shapes and dancing bombs, with Cavall's eyes always in the background, his mouth moving with lies.


	27. Guns and Rose

Chapter 27

Guns and Rose

Jack walked smartly up to the Clubhouse door and banged on it impatiently. It was opened a crack by a surely looking man with a rifle. Jack held up his medical kit and with a grunt the man let him in, opening the door just wide enough for him to slip through before closing it firmly behind him.

It was dark inside. The shutters were closed and the room was shrouded in gloom, making him blink a couple of times so that his eyes could adjust enough to the dim light to make out the huddled forms of the two men. They were handcuffed to pieces of solid furniture; one to the bars on the window and the other to the leg of a pool table which was screwed firmly to the floor. Both of them had been badly beaten and both were gagged. The one near the window had blood running down his face. Jack pushed down a wave of disgust at the way they had been treated. He had had little or no respect for Ben and his cronies before this, but now he had even less. It also left him with an uncomfortable feeling that made him re-visit whether or not Ben could actually be trusted to let him get on that sub. Ben didn't strike him as the sort of person with any ethical qualms whatsoever.

He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust fully to the gloom, ignoring the irritated sighs of the guard behind him, and instead focusing on the two men in front of him. They were both conscious, both watching him carefully, their eyes wide above the gags. From what he could see they both looked alert and in one piece. At least that was something. He went to the one by the window first, the blood stains running down his face suggesting that he was most in need of immediate attention.

Once he had carefully untied the piece of cloth that was shoved uncomfortably into the prisoner's mouth, he turned his attention to the wound on the side of his head. This was the wound he'd noticed earlier, when the men had first been dragged off of the motor boat. The old bandage was hanging off and the wound had opened up again. Jack carefully peeled it back to reveal the wound underneath. He could see now it was a bullet wound – a fairly deep gash grazing the side of his head. Another half inch or so and the bullet would have done more than just shave the skin. The wound looked clean enough, but the stitches already there had been pulled away. He grabbed his medical kit and took out a suture needle, some thread and a small bottle of spirits. The man was eying him warily.

'It's OK, I'm a doctor. I'm just going to stitch this up, OK?' The man's watched him intently, but he showed no sign of understanding and didn't reply. His look was completely blank, making Jack wonder if these men even spoke English.

He doused the wound with a topical anesthetic, waiting a second for it to numb the area before he carefully began to stitch up the jagged edges of the gash.

'Ain't no point you fixing 'em up,' the guard remarked suddenly.

'And why is that, exactly?' Jack turned to him as he squatted down to put the suture kit back in his medical bag. The guard was leaning against the door, his rifle slung casually over his arm.

'Ain't that obvious?'

Jack shook his head, taking out a bottle of water from his pack and holding it up to the prisoner's lips. The man drank thirstily.

'You better put that gag back in right,' the guard drawled, 'Cos if you don't, I'll just have to do it myself, and I like 'em in real tight.' Jack bit back an angry reply, glaring quickly at the guard before he re-tied the piece of cloth with an apologetic nod to the prisoner before he turned his attention to the one on the floor. This one was lying awkwardly on his side, the handcuffs digging into the small of his back and one arm twisted at an angle. When Jack got a closer look at him he could see that overall he had come off better, with only a couple of bruises down one side of his face, and seemed generally in one piece. The biggest issue for this one was that, unlike his companion by the window, who was dressed in a set of military fatigues, this one was wearing a thick flying suit. It was stifling hot in the room with the windows all closed and both men were drenched in sweat.

He removed the gag and gave him the rest of the water, putting the empty bottle back in his pack.

'Give me some of your water,' Jack said curtly to the guard, nodding at the bottle of water he could see at his feet.

'What? No.' the guard defensively moved in front of the water bottle.

'OK,' Jack got up quickly, the guard raised his rifle, but Jack ignored him, pushing through the door as he strode out of the room, across the compound and into the house they'd assigned him. He went to the kitchen and grabbed several bottles of water, half a loaf of bread and some cheese. Then he added a torch and a box of matches along with a couple of blunt knives from the kitchen drawer. They'd thoughtfully removed any sharp knives before he'd gotten there. The one positive about being in Ben's camp was that he'd been able to fill his medical bag to overflowing with as many of medicines as he could from Ben's supply. Now he shoved them all into his pack and slung it over his shoulder.

Back in the clubhouse he moved quickly to the man on the floor, holding the bottle up to his lips. 'Take it slow,' he chided gently, as the man started trying to gulp it down. He could see by the state of him that this man was in serious danger of getting heat stroke.

'Hey,' he said to the guard, 'Undo the cuffs while I get this suit off of him.'

'No can do,' the man drawled.

Jack sighed in frustration, pushing down his rage and trying to stay calm. He gave the pilot more to drink and wet his head with some of the water. Then he lightly squeezed the man's shoulder before he carefully replaced the gag. Then he packed his medical kit into his bag and turned to go.

'Bye Doc,' the guard said with an easy grin. Jack resisted the urge to hit him.

00000

Sayid stood awkwardly by the kitchen area, holding a plate of food. He'd spent the best part of the morning monitoring what Starbuck was doing with that plane, helping her dig it out and then just sitting quietly, watching her try to fix it. Her attempts to make it fly seemed orthodox enough, it looked like she'd been running through a series of system tests - all punctuated with a string of profanities when she couldn't get it to work. He had to admit that he'd been more than a little surprised to see the way she was seriously attempting to work with the biotechnology inside the plane, and he had poked his head inside on more than one occasion to see exactly what it was she was doing. There was some sort of mechanical system with a keyboard and wires hooked up to the bloody mess of flesh. He still had no idea what to make of it all. No idea whether it was even real. Yes, he accepted the facts in front of him and the evidence of his own eyes, but he also had learned to trust his instincts, and they were presently screaming at him that something was wrong here, very _very_ wrong, and it was making him increasingly uncomfortable.

'Dude, ain't you gonna, you know, wash your hands before you eat?' Sayid was startled by Hurley's voice. He looked over to see Hurley standing over Starbuck. She was sitting with her back against a tree, hungrily digging into a plate of food, her hands covered in dried blood from the plane. She laughed at the look of horror on his face.

It's OK, it's all dried up, see?' she held up her hand and grinned when he winced and wrinkled his nose in disgust. 'Hey, I probably smell like a sewer rat as well, but what the hell?' Another grin.

'Eeeeeeew.' Hurley looked down at his own plate and then over at her. 'I don't want to be rude, but, like, you know, there's a whole ocean of water over there.' He pointed out to the shoreline. 'You could wash…'

Starbuck cocked her head to one side and grinned even wider. 'Yeah, I guess I could. After I've eaten.' Then she went back to making short work of her food.

Sayid bit his lip. Everyone was far too complacent. Far too relaxed with these people. He pulled his plate of food off the counter and sat down next to her. She immediately stopped chewing and glanced over at him warily. _Good._ At least she got the message that he was onto her. This might make for an interesting conversation.

'So what do you think of the chances of getting it to fly?' Sayid opened. So far every time he'd attempted to question her about the plane she'd been less than forthcoming, simply shrugging and saying she was working on it. But now he wanted answers. Something wasn't right about these pilots and he was getting increasingly uncomfortable watching them insert themselves into the camp. It was nothing concrete he could pin down, but just that something felt off. And his instincts were never wrong.

Starbuck was watching him intently. She wasn't as relaxed with him as with Hurley and the others. An edginess crept over her whenever he came near her. At least she knew that not all of them were going to be a pushover. She looked up to where the plane still lay on the beach. He followed her gaze, both silently watching the plane for a while, then over to where Sawyer was helping Boomer into the little shelter. Starbuck was eyeing her fellow pilot with a frown.

She got up, wiping her hands down her pants before strolling over to where Sawyer was now plundering the supplies in the kitchen area.

'How's she doin'?' Starbuck asked him quietly.

Sawyer shrugged, 'Let's just say we all hope the little white pills kick in soon. That face is infected and she's runnin' a fever.' He shrugged and shook his head.

'Why won't you answer my questions about the plane?' Sayid had followed her to the kitchen area and was standing behind her. He noticed Sawyer's look of surprise, then interest, as he raised his eyebrows and looked at Starbuck, waiting to hear what she said. At least that meant that Sawyer was suspicious as well. Though Sawyer's motives were dubious at best and Sayid was sure that he would withhold essential information if it suited him.

'Do I think it will fly?' Starbuck said slowly, with an edge to her voice as if she was teasing a fellow pupil at her High School, 'Well. I don't know. I hope so because we're frakked if it doesn't.' She gave him another one of her insufferable smiles and returned to her seat under the tree, picking up her plate of food and continuing to eat.

'So…'Sayid joined her again, noting her sideways glance. Enough of this fencing match. 'Can you get it working or not?'

She must have heard the edge creeping into his voice because finally he got a truthful answer out of her. 'I don't know,' she said honestly, 'I've gone through all the systems, and it checks out same as it did on Galactica, but I'm thinking – hell, I don't know, the controls died on me coming in, so maybe the Cylons have set up some sort of interference pattern or something. Boomer said she had the same problem with the Raptor so I'm guessing it's electronic.'

'Which means?'

She shrugged, 'I don't know. If there is some sort of dampening field, then unless we get a way to unscramble their signal we haven't a hope of getting out of here. She squinted up through the sky, 'And that may be why no one's come to get us out yet, maybe the Beacon's signal is being jammed.'

Starbuck sighed and put down her plate, eyeing Sayid suspiciously as if she was sizing him up. 'OK,' she said finally, 'If I can't get it to fly, then we'll need to get some equipment from Boomer's Raptor. I've got a few ideas' Sayid nodded. '...but I hope it doesn't come to that.' She wiped her hands down her pants and stood up.

He followed her to the Raider and watched as she stood in front of it. The hatch was shut. She banged on the black control panel and sighed in frustration when it didn't open immediately. Then she banged again. Sayid stood there patiently.

'_Frak_. It's jammed shut. Now the frakking thing won't open.' She sucked in a breath and stepped back. 'I don't get it. This hasn't happened before.'

'What's happening?' Sayid asked her, his eyes moving from her face to the plane and back again.

'The frakking hatch won't open.' She stood glaring at the closed hatch, chewing her lip. 'The electrics must have fried. Damn!'

'So what now?'

She turned to him in annoyance. 'I'm going to get myself cleaned up.' She gave him a death glare and strode down to the shoreline. He watched silently as she huffed down to the water's edge, and peeled off her pants and top, scooshing them in the water and wringing them out thoroughly before tossing them back onto the sand. Then she dived in.

Sayid stood there a moment watching her from the plane. He didn't know who these people were but what he did know was when a story or a face didn't match. _Dampening field_? _Interference pattern_? He was sure they were assuming that none of the survivors from the flight would know about these things, but communications were his field of expertise and he knew for a fact that what she was suggesting wasn't remotely possible. And he assumed that she knew that too. Oh, she was a good liar, he'd give her that. But to lie well your story needed to match up with a plausible reality. But if all the talk of inference patterns and dampening fields was so far-fetched then how did he explain the fighter plane with the body parts hung inside it? Either they were telling the truth and it was some macabre bio-experimental plane, which seemed highly unlikely - or else, more plausibly, someone had cobbled together bits and pieces from various animals and put them there, presumably to frighten them. He had six years experience of the US military and he knew that they had nothing like this – and if they had, they wouldn't let it crash unnoticed on a small island somewhere in the middle of the pacific. No, this was a setup. And now they couldn't even get the plane's hatch open. How convenient for them.

He watched Starbuck swimming in the ocean, her clothes and gun belt strewn on the beach. Sayid saw his moment and leapt up quickly. His mind was made up. These people weren't safe, and they couldn't afford to take any risks. They needed a better grasp of what their intentions were before he could even imagine letting them wander around the camp armed.

She looked up just as he reached down and took the gun belt, strapping it quickly round his own waist. He took out the sidearm and checked the chamber. It was much chunkier than an ordinary pistol, the rounds were larger too, he could only think it was designed to take a variety of high velocity or explosive rounds for the casing to be so thick.

'Hey, that's mine.' She was out of the water fast, water dripping off her tank and underwear, 'Give that back.'

He clicked off the safety and fired a round into the sand in front of her. The sound of the retort was loud and he could almost see the whole camp behind him jumping in alarm. Starbuck stopped in her tracks, standing about twenty feet away and eying him with a murderous look.

'We don't allow weapons to be carried in the camp,' he said calmly. 'I'm going to look after this for you.'

He could see she didn't buy it.

'What about the sidearm stuck down the back of your pants?'

'I know how to use it,' he said evenly, 'and, more importantly, I know _when_ to use it.'

'Ah, so you've stolen her gun now?' Sawyer's drawl was laced with sarcasm. He had somehow found his way next to him and was watching the standoff with amusement. 'But I'd say that the lady was right,' he continued with a sideways look to Sayid. 'Who says you should play sheriff? I mean, I ain't go not gun, and-'

'Be quiet, Sawyer,' Sayid said impatiently. He could see her weighing up her chances and Sawyer really wasn't helping. 'Put it this way,' Sayid tried to sound conciliatory, ignoring Sawyer and speaking directly to Starbuck. 'We've had a few accidents recently. People have been killed. So we are careful who has guns now.'

'Oh come on Sayid, you're just makin' this up, why can't the lady have her gun?' Sayid had no idea what kind of a damn fool game Sawyer was playing now, but he definitely didn't need it right now.

'Sayid's right,' it was Hurley. 'People got killed. Guns are dangerous. I don't think we should have them in the camp, I mean, we're friends, right? So why do we need them?' Half the camp seemed to have made their way down to the shoreline and now Sayid found himself in the middle of a debate. The last thing he'd anticipated when he'd taken the gun.

Starbuck licked her lips and gave a half smile. Then she shrugged. 'Ok,' she said, 'If that's what everyone wants.' She turned back and walked towards the water as if she didn't care.

'You'll get your gun back when you need it,' Sayid called after her. He couldn't keep the satisfaction out of his voice. He glared once at Sawyer, who returned his stare now without a trace of humor, resolving to hide this gun with the rifle. Thankfully he'd hidden the rifle before Sawyer and Kate had escaped from their captivity, otherwise he was quite sure that Sawyer's light fingers would have spirited it away somewhere. As it was, Sayid currently had control of most of the armaments in the camp, and that was exactly the way he wanted it. Once he'd taken Starbuck's gun successfully it would be fairly straightforward to strip Boomer and Racetrack of theirs. This was going better than he would have thought.

As he followed Sawyer and the others at the beach some instinct told him to turn around. The sounds of the waves must have obscured her footsteps because as he glanced behind him she was already on him, throwing herself at him from her full height. He twisted as he fell, rolling quickly from underneath her. But she had somehow anticipated it and her foot caught him in the guts leaving him winded on his back. She bent down for the gun, grinning as if she'd beaten him. 'Maybe you want to rethink the rules now,' she said. Quick as a flash he flicked one leg over her ankle and brought her down, at the same time he twisted away from her he reached for the gun, putting his hand over hers and pushing it down, forcing the muzzle of the gun into the sand. They lay facing each other, Sayid's hand on hers. She met his eyes and he saw a light in them that he recognized, a sort of reckless euphoria that he'd seen before. If he'd had any doubts before that this woman was dangerous he certainly didn't have them anymore. She was enjoying this.

'Oh, c'mon you two, quit horsin' around and just figure out who's gonna have the damn gun.' Sawyer was standing over them both, shaking his head. 'Or if you're looking for something else, hell, at least go do it in the middle of the jungle, the whole world's lookin' on.' He nodded up the beach where a crowd was standing silently watching them. Starbuck grinned but increased her grip on the gun. Sayid maintained control and didn't move.

'Well, hell, one of you's gonna have to let go, who's it gonna be?'

Starbuck smiled, 'What's it going to be, Sayid? We can stay here all day, or-' he brought his elbow up hard and fast, catching her on the side of the face as he pushed her off, grabbing full control of the gun. She sat back on the sand holding her face and eyeing him angrily.

'You might wish you hadn't done that,' muttered Sawyer as he saw the expression on Starbuck's face. 'Look, why don't I take the gun and you two can just kick the crap out of each other and see who wins?' Sawyer was grinning widely now, his arms folded. And Sayid had to admit that he was right, this wasn't about the gun anymore.

'If you want my opinion,' remarked Charlie, 'I think she's more dangerous _without_ the gun.'

The fundamental problem, Sayid realised, was that he'd failed to gain the trust and respect of either Charlie or Sawyer. He glanced over to where Jin was standing next to Sun. He was watching them impassively. OK, so Jin wasn't behind him either. He sighed and got up.

'Look,' he addressed everyone, 'Jack had one place where all the guns were kept safely. I propose that we do the same. If we all agree,' he looked pointedly at Starbuck, 'then there don't have to be any bad feelings.'

'Sounds good to me,' put in Hurley.

'OK, Gungadin, so who looks after the guns?' said Sawyer.

'I will.' Rose stepped forward. 'Bernard knows which way up they go, so we can keep them safely.'

'Which way _up_ they go? Are you serious?' Sawyer was looking at her incredulously.

'I'm good with that,' said Hurley. Sayid took a deep slow breath. This wasn't going the way he had hoped. But he'd boxed in. He shrugged and holstered the gun, unclipping the belt and walking slowly towards Rose, handing it to her silently. Sayid shot a glance over to the camp. He couldn't believe he was doing this. He knew now without a doubt that none of these people had any respect for him or for his skills and it left a bitter taste in his mouth, a raw shame of humiliation. They didn't trust him. He looked up, expecting to see all their faces staring at him, judging him and finding him wanting. But no one was watching him, they were all fixed on something further up the beach. He turned to see what had caught their attention, 'Oh god,' he whispered under his breath. He had followed their stares to where the plane still lay buried further up the beach. But now it wasn't as buried as it had been before, and furthermore, it was beginning to move, rocking slowly from side to side.

'What the-?' It was Sawyer's voice, drowned out by a hissing sound coming from the plane itself before a jet of sand shot out from behind the plane, spraying sand in all directions.

'Holy cow,' breathed Hurley as the plane lifted off slowly from the ground. It effortlessly shook the remainder off the sand off its back and sides and then it paused three feet above the ground. Sayid stood rooted to the spot. This plane was nothing like he'd seen before. For a start it barely made a sound. And it was hovering effortlessly above the sand, it's wings tilting slightly. Suddenly it pulled away at a speed that was breathtaking, banking sharply as it headed up towards the sky. From there it accelerated again, moving more quickly than Sayid had imagined possible, the only sound a sort of hissing or spitting noise from it's engine. It flew crookedly though, as if the pilot inside hadn't quite mastered the controls yet.

'Who is flying it?' asked Sayid.

'You tell me,' Starbuck replied flatly.

The plane lurched and hurled itself upwards, flying vertically up into the sky. Then it stopped suddenly, bouncing back as if it had hit an invisible barrier. Like a fly at a window it threw itself up again and again, each time being repulsed. It was as if some invisible membrane was surrounding the Island and wouldn't let it through. After four or five attempts it paused and then turned, screaming down towards the beach.

'Oh _frak_! Run!' shouted Starbuck. It took a beat for Sayid to see why she'd shouted out, then he realised what was happening.

'Get off the beach!' he screamed, as the dark shape of the Raider lined itself up parallel to the shoreline and began to swoop down towards them. The whole camp seemed to take a shocked gasp and then everyone scattered, throwing themselves towards the cover of the jungle. Sayid started running. He could hear a rushing sound as the plane dived towards them, the pop popping sound of bullets thudding into the sand. He threw himself into the cover of the trees, praying that it wouldn't come back round for another pass. He lay panting in the undergrowth, squinting into the sun. The plane turned, wobbling as it flew, then disappeared quickly across the arc of the sky.


	28. Blitz

Chapter 28

Blitz

'So, what, you want to us to sit right here until the Cylons show up? Is that it?' Laura Roslin could barely contain her annoyance. She couldn't believe she was even having this conversation with him. Again. It was infuriating. And dangerous. No more than eight hours had gone by since they'd discovered that Apollo had taken off with the prisoners and already Adama was going to pieces. Thankfully, _this _time she wasn't the wrong side of a prison cell or flat on her back on a hospital bed. Someone needed to be the voice of reason because, quite frankly, Commander Adama wasn't it.

She watched as he shifted uncomfortably, but held his ground. 'If the Cylons show up we jump away just like we always have.'

'You know fine well that we've been lucky so far. The sensible thing would be to jump away right now.'

His gaze didn't falter; only a small twitch in his jaw gave her any indication that he had even heard her what she was saying. She sighed in exasperation and then turned away, staring at a point on the floor in an attempt to stay calm. There was a stain right there, made by some boot and never cleaned up. She was tempted to scuff it with her shoe, to see if that would lift it off. Anything but having to wade her way through this frustrating conversation. She took a deep breath and then turned back to him, staring straight at him, her eyes boring into his. 'You realize you're doing it again, don't you?'

He narrowed his eyes but didn't say anything. Stubborn to the end.

She took a deep breath and launched in, 'Captain Apollo took it upon himself to bust the prisoners out of the Brig and leave Galactica and the fleet. He's gone, Bill. He made his choice and you just have to live with that. I will _not_ let you risk the whole fleet because you cannot let go.' She saw him take a long shuddering breath. The slight, almost imperceptible slump of his shoulders told her that her words had finally hit home. _Gods_, what it took to get through to this man.

It wasn't as if she didn't sympathize. She felt for him, she really did, but no way was she risking the whole of the human race because his feelings for his family were blinding him to anything else. She wouldn't have marked him as sentimental, but he was a passionate man and his feelings ran deep. Surprisingly deep. She felt herself softening towards him, and then checked herself. She couldn't afford to get all sentimental as well. Not now. There was too much at stake.

'So.' She continued, steeling herself to push the advantage before he closed up again. 'We need to decide where we go from here. When Lieutenant Thrace returns with the arrow…'

He gave something that sounded like a choking laugh, shaking his head at her. '_If_ she returns.' He corrected harshly, his tone matching hers.

'Fine. _If_ she returns, then we have to have a way for her to contact us. Given that we've jumped away from her last known position, we have to find a way to let her know where we are.'

Adama sucked in a lungful of air and let it out slowly. She could see she'd maxed his patience to the limit now. Mentioning Lieutenant Thrace and the arrow had lost her any advantage she might have gained in this conversation and now he was flipping out again. He was still more than furious at her sending Lieutenant Thrace back to Caprica in the first place. She knew he didn't believe the Picon prophesies and that he thought it was the Chamalla speaking – all a product of her deranged mind. How could she explain that it was more than that? She still believed the arrow was somehow the key to finding Earth. She still, somehow _knew_ it, deep inside, in every fibre of her being. But try explaining that to him. He wasn't going to buy it. Sure, he'd agreed to look beyond the fact that she'd sent Lieutenant Thrace to get the arrow, and of course re-visiting that particular subject was never going to be easy. But the fact remained that Lieutenant Thrace was out there and Adama seemed to have no idea how to contact her. And that bothered her.

'Starbuck's gone,' he said thickly. 'I don't think she'll be coming back.'

She bit back an angry reply. There was no point in trying to convince him. It was gut feelings and belief, but somehow she knew that the prophesy was playing out in front of them. Lieutenant Thrace _was_ going to return with the arrow and they were going use it to open the tomb of Athena and find Earth. _That_ was how it was going to go. The fact that Lieutenant Thrace had even agreed to do it, that the Raider had been there, that it had all happened so smoothly, didn't that mean anything? To her it spoke volumes. The arrow was key. And at the very least they had to find a way for Starbuck to locate them once she returned. Laura Roslin had no idea how long that would take, but it had been nearly six days since Lieutenant Thrace had gone. Surely she would be back by now? Chances were, she was already out there somewhere searching for Galactica.

'When I spoke to Captain Apollo he suggested that Lieutenant Thrace would look for us on Kobol, is that correct? – you know her better than I do.'

He winced at that. Not only had she just hit the raw nerve, she was busily stripping it. She saw the agony in his eyes and immediately regretted her choice of words.

'There are currently at least two Base Stars orbiting Kobol. Starbuck could probably make it through in the Raider, but the moment any of us go near that sector the Cylons would be onto us immediately.'

'So when she returns with the arrow, how do we make contact with her?'

'Unless those Base Stars either move away from Kobol or from our last position there is no way for her to find us.' She could see the despair written all over his face. He'd lost them both now, Starbuck _and_ Apollo, and she could see the spark inside of him burning down, his will and drive faltering. She couldn't let that happen. Not now. Not ever. The fleet needed him. Hell, _she _needed him. They all needed him strong and in command, not crippled by grief and uncertainty.

'Bill?'

He looked up at her, his eyes empty.

'Keep it together.'

Another long breath, another weary sigh. 'Have you started the treatment yet?' He deftly changed the subject, catching her on her own weak spot.

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Because one of us needs to be thinking clearly at the moment.'

He cleared his throat. She watched as he clenched and unclenched his hand, almost like it had stiffened up, or it didn't know what to do anymore, or perhaps he wanted to hit someone. 'Apollo said that Daniel Faraday knew where Starbuck was.' Adama was staring straight ahead now, speaking quietly. He turned to look directly at her, his face and voice clearer. 'He was in that cell with Faraday. Apollo knew something, something he wasn't telling me. He said he wanted to take Faraday and go after Starbuck. He tried to explain it but I wouldn't listen. I guess he decided it was worth going anyway.'

'You think he had information that he didn't pass on to us?'

'I don't know. But until we have good reason to move the fleet, I'm not going anywhere. He made the call. And if he thought it was worth the risk, then-'

'Then you will support his decision.' She finished for him. 'Even if it puts the whole fleet at risk? You know he left with the two Cylons, and that now they probably know exactly where we are. So how in hell does that make any military sense whatsoever?' She felt the heat rising to her face as she stared him down. _Gods_, the arrogance of these Adamas was insufferable.

'The best military decisions are made on a hunch,' he said firmly, 'And until I decide otherwise, we stay right here. So why don't you get yourself to sickbay and see about getting Doc Cottle to start your treatment?'

She shook her head. 'You have one day.' She said firmly. 'One more day and then we jump the fleet.'

00000

Sawyer lay face down in the undergrowth with his arms over his head. When that damn thing had started shooting he'd run like crazy and thrown himself into the nearest bush. Not that a bush would help any, but hell, it made him feel better to at least be under some sort of cover. Once the sounds of shooting turned to silence he pushed himself up on one elbow and peered up to the sky to see the small shape of the plane disappearing over the trees, banking awkwardly as it turned inland. Sawyer let out the breath he'd been holding. He just hoped it didn't decide to come back and try some more target practice.

'What the hell was that?' Charlie's voice echoed from somewhere to his right. Sawyer could just see the outline of Clare behind him, protectively holding onto Aaron, her eyes wide with fear.

He stood up and looked around quickly, checking everyone was there and in one piece, scanning the beach, dreading the sight of any more dead bodies. He'd seen enough of those. He stood taller, straining over the tops of the undergrowth. He couldn't hear any yelling or cries of pain, which was good – and no dead bodies either. By some strange miracle no one had been hurt. He dusted himself off and took in the silent, staring faces of the people around him. There was a hush as everyone pulled themselves upright and waited for – what? For someone to take charge? For someone to say something? This was where Jack would step in and make some vomit-inducing pseudo heart-warming speech. He felt his lip curl in derision, relieved and glad that, for once, Jack _wasn't_ here.

'Well,' said Starbuck ruefully, staring at the point where the Raider had disappeared, 'at least we know it can shoot with our ammo.' There was a sort of shocked gasp from the group, and then Sayid rounded on her.

'You armed that plane?'

'Yeah,' she grinned. 'Good job the damn thing can't shoot straight.'

'Oh, so I suppose you had a hand in making it fly away as well? What exactly did you do to it?' Sayid was almost spitting in rage now, a vicious sneer telling Sawyer he was perilously close to morphing into crazy-sadist-Iraqi-torturer.

'What? What did _I_ do to it?' Starbuck snapped back immediately. 'You're the frakking Cylon, you tell me.'

'You think I was responsible for what just happened?' They were face to face now, inches away from each other.

'Hey, hey, c'mon, quit fighting, will ya? It's gone,' Sawyer pushed in between them, making contact with Sayid who pushed him back roughly. Sawyer held up his hands, signalling for him to calm down. 'So let's all just slow down and try to figure out what in hell is goin' on, OK?' Starbuck took a step back, her hands balled into fists at her side. Sawyer could tell she was itching to take on Sayid again.

Sawyer stared at them both in disbelief. What in hell was wrong with these two? They were too alike, that was what. Crap, _one_ Sayid was bad enough, last thing they needed was another one.

'OK,' Charlie shot Sayid an irritated look and turned his attention to the whole group. 'So no one touched the plane and now it's flying around like some crazy drunk firing at us?'

'It's hurt,' said Boomer. She'd been standing quietly at the edge of the circle of people. She looked bad, her hair was sticking to her head and her eyes were – well, her eyes said something that Sawyer couldn't decipher. She'd been the last one near that plane. Well, both of them had, but he knew he hadn't done anything. Something had happened, he knew that. The way she'd been touching the plane, looking at it. Something about the way she'd been around it… he stared at her intently. Even through the fever her eyes were darting about. Nervous as hell. Or guilty. He knew that look.

'What do you mean, it's hurt?' Charlie expression was a mixture of surprise and amusement.

'Yeah,' he echoed, 'You sayin' the _plane_ is sick? Seriously?'

'It missed.' She said simply, 'If it was functioning normally we'd all be dead.'

'So the plane was malfunctioning.' Sayid mused. 'But the question is, who was flying it?'

Boomer's eyes darted about. 'I don't know.' Sawyer had to hand it to her, she was a lousy liar. He glanced over at Sayid, who was watching Boomer suspiciously.

'You and Sawyer were over by the plane earlier, weren't you?' Sayid's voice was hardened steel.

Boomer looked over at Sawyer, panicked fear in her eyes and something else – yeah, _definitely __guilt_. He raised his eyebrows at her, silently asking what the hell was going on. He wasn't going to out her in front of everyone else. Not yet. Not until he knew what the hell it was she wasn't saying.

'We just took a walk over there,' Sawyer said evenly, still watching Boomer. 'I didn't see nothing. Neither of us touched the plane.'

Boomer's eyes grew wide with surprise as she realized what he was doing. Yeah, he was covering for her. Yeah, maybe a dumb move, but Sawyer didn't think so. Something told him there was more going on here and until he understood what that was he would keep things nice and simple.

'So… the question still remains. Who's in that plane?' Sayid's eyes scanned the group, mentally checking off who was there to try and figure out who was missing.

Racetrack was standing a little to the side, shaking her head slowly. She glanced over at Starbuck who rolled her eyes and then spoke up. 'I think it's getting pretty obvious now that no one is flying the godsdam plane.'

'So, what, you saying the _godsdamn_ _plane_ is flyin' itself?' Sawyer mimicked her voice, holding out his hands in exasperation.

'Yeah, looks to me like it's flying itself. Which means we're all frakked,' Starbuck stood quietly for a while, waiting for a reaction. No one said a word. Sawyer just looked at her like she had two heads.

'You're kidding, right?' Hurley asked, 'I mean, that plane's not real, those body parts… crap.'

Starbuck was thoughtful for a moment. Sawyer could almost see the thoughts churning in her mind. Suddenly her eyes grew wide and she turned to Boomer, 'What have you got on the Raptor, Boomer?'

Boomer took a deep breath. 'Um, the full spread, we kitted her out for combat, so full ordinance; missilies, jiggers, drones, the lot.'

'Nukes?'

'No. No nukes.'

'Your planes carry goddamn nukes?' Sawyer heard his voice rising in alarm.

Boomer watched him evenly, 'We used a nuke to blow up the base star.'

Starbuck cut across the conversation impatiently, 'OK, so you've got the Emergency Beacon set up?'

'Yeah.'

'Then once that Raider locks onto it, there's enough ordinance on the Raptor to blow up half this frakking Island.'

'We were attacked,' Boomer said with an effort, 'So the Cylons know about the plane already.'

'Who attacked you? The Others?' asked Charlie suspiciously.

'It wasn't a person,' cut in Racetrack, 'It was like smoke, or…'

'I don't think that thing dismantles planes,' said Charlie darkly.

'What?' Rose stepped forward, 'What you all talking about - _smoke_?'

'There's something out there, in the jungle. It's like a column of smoke. That's what got the pilot.' Charlie looked uncomfortable.

'What you _talking_ about?' Rose's voice was rising in alarm.

Charlie just shrugged, 'It was some smoke thing – Jack told us to keep quiet about it. He didn't want to scare anyone.'

Clearly it hadn't been part of Jack's plan to enlighten the rest of the camp about what exactly was lurking in the jungle behind them. It must have been part of his _'don't tell the children' _policy. Either way, none of the people here except Charlie seemed to have a clue what the smoke thing was. He sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was panic everyone or to clean up Jack's mess.

Sawyer took a deep breath. 'OK, look, there's something out there and we don't know what it is, but Charlie's right, whatever it is, it ain't interested in Boomer's plane. And right now, that plane's the thing we need to worry about. But anyways, either Boomer's plane is captured or it ain't. And if it ain't, then got we a problem, right?'

Starbuck nodded. 'The Raider will recognise the Raptor's Emergency Beacon and then target it. And then… _Boom._ But even without the Beacon, if the Raider locates the plane it will look for a Cylon signature. If it doesn't get one it'll destroy it.'

'There's a Cylon transponder on the Raptor,' said Boomer quietly, 'We used it to get into the Base Star, so we know it works.'

'OK, so do you have your own transponder signal and a Cylon one transmitting at the same time?' Sayid was clearly trying to grasp what the two women were talking about.

Boomer shook her head. 'I threw the Cylon transponder over a cliff.'

'What?' Starbuck's voice was rising with incredulity.

'We didn't want to attract any unwanted attention.' Boomer was looking uncomfortable now.

'But the cliff was only fifty yards away,' put in Racetrack, 'So it didn't go far…'

Starbuck sighed in exasperation. Sawyer couldn't help a small smile. He had to agree with her. Boomer and Racetrack were clearly not the _crème de la crème_ of their fighting unit. They were kind of cute, but ruthless fighting machines? _Nah_.

'So let me get this straight,' Starbuck's tone had hardened, 'you threw the Cylon transponder fifty yards away over the side of a cliff?'

Boomer and Racetrack both nodded.

'Right. So for all intents and purposes it is still practically sitting on the Raptor?'

Boomer looked away.

'I suggest you turn one or both of them off,' said Sayid, 'Where is the plane?'

'About ten clicks Northeast of here,' Boomer offered.

'Well, the Raider would have hit it by now if it was going to,' Starbuck remarked, 'And I don't see any fireworks. But it might be an idea to go check it out. I'll need my sidearm,' she put out her hand for the gun. Sayid paused for a moment, then nodded to Rose as she passed it quietly back to Starbuck. Sawyer couldn't help a grin. Well, that had lasted all of five minutes.

'But if you turn off the Beacon then doesn't it mean that no one can come and rescue us?' asked Hurley.

'I don't think they're coming anyway,' Starbuck said, 'If they were they'd be here by now. The Cylons must be jamming the signal, and they've got this place screened. You saw how the plane bounced off that force-field. If we can get to the Raptor and get some power up we might be able to run a scan from it, maybe unblock it.' She was checking over her sidearm, strapping the holster back onto her hips with a roll and a swagger. 'You ready Racetrack?' she looked over at the other woman, who just nodded quietly. He had to hand it to Racetrack, she was good at following orders. Not so hot when it came to thinking for herself though.

'You stay here, Boomer. You look like crap. Go lie down or something.' Starbuck turned away from her dimissively.

'So guys, what now?' asked Charlie, 'Is it safe to go back to the beach? Or is that thing going to come back and shoot us in our sleep?'

'It has perfect night vision,' said Starbuck simply 'But it's injured. I don't think it'll be back.'

'You keep saying it's hurt,' said Charlie, 'But that didn't stop it from making it's dam-busters run and strafing the whole bloody beach now did it?'

Sayid held up his hands for quiet, 'We'll move the camp into the shelter here,' he said, 'grab what you can. It's not safe to go back to the beach today. We'll make shelters here while it is still light, and then go and check out Boomer's plane.'

'Dudes? 'Hurley looked up at the sky, 'You might want to wait awhile. It's gonna rain.'

Sayid glanced up at the black clouds massing just over the sea to the East, 'Hurley's right. We should wait until the rain passes. That should still give us time before dark.' Sawyer watched quietly. He saw Starbuck hesitate.

'Look,' he offered, 'We need to sit down and think about this first - every time we go running off into that jungle someone gets killed, so why not take a moment to plan it first, huh?' Sawyer couldn't believe they were doing this again. Another crazy rescue mission into the jungle. And yeah, looked like he'd be going too. Provided someone gave him a gun, that is.

Starbuck was eying the clouds suspicously. They were a dark meancing purple and bearing down on them fast. Surely even she could see the sense in waiting half an hour.

'Slogging through the jungle in the rain ain't much fun, darlin',' he drawled softly, giving her a small smile when she gave him a curt nod, sucking in a breath impatiently at having to wait.

'Well, you all can do what you want,' Rose's tone was determined, 'but I'm going right back to my little camp. And I ain't gonna be scared out by nobody. That thing couldn't fly straight anyways. Besides, now we know about that _smoke thing_ in the jungle, don't look to me like we's any safer out here than on the beach.'

'Rose-' Sayid began, but Rose just shook her head and shuffled back towards her camp, Bernard following with a sheepish smile and a shrug.

'She's just like the queen mum in the blitz, isn't she?' Charlie grinned, 'But she's right, though, I don't see how we're any safer here. Especially as that thing has _perfect night vision_.' He looked pointedly at Boomer.

'Well, for a start your nice big shelters are an obvious target,' drawled Sawyer, 'And for the record,' he bowed slightly towards Sayid, 'I agree with Sayid, you'd be a damn fool to go back and stay on that beach after the night of the living dead plane just filled it with bullets. Now I suggest we all quit the jibber jabber and start movin' our stuff.'

Sawyer glanced over to where Starbuck was quickly putting a shelter together. She'd chosen a natural hollow that would go a long way to protect her from another arial attack. He had to admit she was good. Smart, quick, courageous, but she barely had a handle on her emotions and she was reckless and out of control. She made him nervous. And she had her gun back, too, he noticed.


	29. Don't Wait Up

Chapter 29

Don't wait up

He found her where he'd left her - still sitting quietly at the dock watching the submarine. Only now it was early afternoon and it looked like she'd been there for most of the day. He understood why she didn't want to go back to the compound; he'd noticed the whispered comments and pointed stares and how everyone refused to interact with her directly. She cut a lonely figure now, sitting quietly hugging her knees and looking forlornly out to sea.

'You been here all day?' he asked conversationally.

She glanced up when she saw him and smiled. 'No. I left to eat a while back.'

He grunted, watching her smile fade when she noticed the pack he was carrying. He sat down next to her. 'Those pilots,' he said without preamble, 'Ben's going to kill them, isn't he?'

Her eyes widened briefly in surprise as she glanced over at him, then she ooked away and sighed. 'I don't know, Jack.'

'I think you do,' he pushed.

'No.' she said. 'I don't, I – ,' her eyes fluttered closed and when she opened them the intense blue was solid and determined. 'OK. Yes. He's probably going to kill them.'

'And you approve of that?' he saw her startled, masked quickly as she slid into what he was beginning to realise was a sort of inscrutable defence.

'No. Jack. I don't approve. But what do you want me to do, go shoot whoever is guarding them and break them out?'

He gritted his jaw, jiggling his leg unconsciously as he sat there, his whole body screaming for action, because, yes, that was exactly what he wanted her to do. With him. Both of them busting out the prisoners and getting the hell out of there. He'd already made his decision. No way was he going to leave, knowing that those two men were about to be slaughtered. No way. He couldn't sail away in that submarine knowing that by leaving he was allowing it to happen. Not when he could have done somehting about it. The question was, _what_? What could he do? How could he get those pilots out of there and all of them away to safety? He clamped his jaw shut and looked over at her. She was waiting quietly, watching him with a mixture of calm and trepidation.

'You're not going on the sub, are you?' she asked softly.

He chewed his lip. 'No.'

She sighed, a controlled, steady breath forced out of tense lungs. He could see her calculating her chances.

'Come with me.' He said quickly.

She gave a small, lost looking smile and then shook her head. He could see her eyes filling up, her face flushing. 'I can't.' she said quietly. 'The sub – this is my one chance. Please don't do this, Jack. I –' she took another deep, shuddering breath.

'I'm sorry Juliet. I can't let Ben kill them. I can't do that.'

'No. Of course you can't.' There was a hint of bitterness in her words. He knew what she was thinking – that if he'd just played his part and fudged that operation, Ben would be dead and she'd be- well, he wasn't sure where she'd be, but someplace different. Maybe she'd be worse off, he didn't know. But either way, it was the same. He couldn't kill Ben on that operating table, and neither could he let these two men die either. The fact that she could let the killing happen so easily – well, however desperate he was to get off of this island, he wasn't that desperate. Looked like she was though. Either that or she'd lived with these people too long and their dubious moral code was rubbing off on her. Or maybe he'd simply misjudged her, and the hardness was just _there_ inside of her. He hoped not. He hoped it was just the desperation talking. He wanted to think better of her than that.

'Look, I'm not even sure Ben will let us go anyway.' he said firmly, knowing that was the truth.

Juliet didn't say anything, her face clear, staring resolutely out to the horizon.

All things being equal he would have taken the chance and waited to see if they even made it onto that sub. But now, with those two pilots… there was no way he was walking away from them. He just had to figure out how to bust them out. There was only one guard, and no one was paying much attention to the clubhouse. He could get back in easy enough and disable the guard, then it was just a case of getting far enough away before half of Ben's camp came after them. That was part he wasn't sure of. Getting them out of the compound undetected might get them a few hours head start, but he needed to get in there while there was still only one guard, before they were moved later on. He needed to go soon. Like, now.

'What's the fence combination?' he asked her suddenly.

Her eyes opened wider for a moment before she closed them and frowned. 'Jack. Please. I thought you wanted to get off this Island?'

'Just tell me the combination, Juliet.'

'I can't.' she paused and then said softly, 'They'll know it was me.'

He looked away, thinking for a moment. 'OK, then,' he said decisively, 'I'll just have to do it without the combination,' He made to get up,

'Please-' he heard her say, 'Look, there's no point, even if you got out of the compound they'd track you down. You wouldn't make it, Jack.'

He hesitated, thinking over what she had said. She was right. And without the fence combination he wouldn't even make it out of the compound unseen. Getting over the fence would be, well, a challenge. Hell, there had to be a way.

'I need that combination. Look, come with us.'

'No, Jack, I'm sorry, I can't-'

'Why not?'

'Well, apart from the fact that you haven't a hope in hell of getting away with this-'

'I might, with your help-'

'No. I'm a doctor, Jack. I'm really not much help to you.'

'You know the fence combination.'

'I- look. I'm sorry. I can't do this. I just-'

She just, what? Just wanted to get on that sub. And he was taking away her only chance. But he couldn't get on that sub at the price of those two men's lives. 'You want those two men dead?' he asked harshly, 'Because that would be what it would mean. You know that, right?'

'I don't want anyone dead, but I can't stop them dying. I can't. It's not up to me, I can't just wade in and save everyone. People just die here, Jack. That's just how it is and you'd better get used to that.' Her voice hitched; she was nearly crying.

'I'm sorry for what they've done to you Juliet, but it doesn't have to be that way.' He stood up, shouldering his pack, wondering if there was anything else he could say – he didn't want to just leave her here, but he couldn't force her and she seemed determined.

'You going to say anything? To Ben?' he asked stiffly, watching her turn up to face him.

She shook her head almost imperceptibly.

He nodded his thanks and took a deep breath. He had to think fast. Maybe they could come down to the shoreline and swim around the bay. The fence stopped at the water's edge. Or steal a boat – or even hide on the submarine. He turned to ask her about the fence, to check how easy it would be to swim around it, but as he turned, something caught his eye – a plane? He watched the black shape as it flew over the water, turning in a tight circle to cut back towards them. The plane was a strange shape – built in a curve, something he'd seen before – not that he was that familiar with military aircraft, but this one looked unusual. A stealth plane, maybe? Something in him leapt up. _Hope_.

The military had come after their pilots.

This was it.

Finally. Finally someone had found them.

He felt the tightness in his chest easing as the tension rushed out of him. _It was over._ They'd been found. This had to be a reconnaissance plane. He felt a flood of relief and started waving his arms up and down to try to get the pilot's attention. It was coming in fast and low, headed straight for them. He just hoped the pilot saw them. There was a moment of confusion in his mind, then doubt, then a searing blade of fear as he realized what it was he was seeing. The plane was flying towards the jetty, flying low and parallel to the water, as if it was about to… Suddenly he snapped into action.

'Get down!' he shouted to Juliet, grabbing her arm and pulling her quickly off the dockside and into the cover of the bushes. She landed heavily with a grunt. He looked up to see the plane screaming in towards the dock. He blinked as it roared by. There was a thump followed by a splash and then a loud explosion. He covered his head in his hands, throwing himself onto her, shielding Juliet from the blast with his own body. All hell was exploding around them. He lay there rigid, hearing the sounds of debris falling into the water and onto the wooden dock behind them. He could still hear the tell-tale whine of the plane, glancing up quickly to see it pulling around for another pass, swooping towards the compound and strafing the dock as it flew up towards the houses. He pushed himself more firmly on top of her, feeling her hearth hammering in her chest, her body slight and small beneath his. He lay there perfectly still, frozen, listening to the staccato sound of gunshots coming from the compound. It must be firing on the houses. _What the hell?_ He looked up again to see it screaming up at a steep angle. It was tilting crazily from side to side. It looked like the pilot had just about lost control. He watched as the plane swerved, skimming the tops of the trees before arching upwards, lopsided, before disappearing over the horizon.

It was gone as fast as it had come. He lay still for a moment, shifting his weight so he didn't crush her. He felt her slowly uncurl beneath him, letting out a small whimpering sound.

'Are you hurt?'

She shook her head as both of them sat up and surveyed what was left of the dockside. The motor launch was nothing more than smouldering wreck and the sub was gone too, bits of floating debris the only sign of where it had been. He stood up warily, ready to dive back down again if the plane came back for another go around. Juliet stood up slowly. He could see the despair in her eyes as she stared at what was left of the submarine.

'Forty five, ninety two, thirty five,' she said quietly.

'What?'

'Forty five, ninety two, thirty five, The combination for the fence' her voice was clear now. 'If you follow the shoreline South it'll take you back to your camp. It's a little further than cutting inland, but it'll be safer.'

'Come with us,' he said insistently.

'I can't.'

'Why?'

'You'll need to hurry.' She said pointedly.

'I don't get it. What's he got over you?'

She smiled sadly. He could see the tears in her eyes. She wanted off this Island even more than he did. So what the hell was it?

'Go,' she said, 'While you can.' He stood there a moment, weighing up whether he could force her to come with them. What was he thinking? He couldn't force her to do anything, not like… he had no idea what Ben was doing with this woman, but it wasn't good.

'Go, Jack.' She said again. 'I'll be fine.'

As he looked in her eyes he knew for a fact that wasn't true. 'I can't force you-' he began.

'No. You can't. Please. Go.' He nodded, then put his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. He breathed it in. She smelled good. Maybe in another life, the two of them…

He broke off, holding her face for a little longer than he should have. 'Look after yourself, Juliet.'

She smiled wistfully and looked away. He left her watching the remains of the sub floating on the water.

He reached the compound at a run. People were screaming, four of the houses were on fire and there were several bodies littering the compound. He checked them quickly. Two were dead, another was unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. The wound looked worse than it was. They didn't need him here. There was screaming now, chaos - smoke everywhere, billowing out in huge black clouds from the burning houses. As he ran up to the clubhouse door, he could see that it was already open, the frightened guard peering round it. Without hesitating, Jack walked up the steps and quckly slipped inside, slamming the door behind him with one arm as he grabbed the guard by the throat with the other, 'Give me the keys,' he said.

The gaurd looked terrified, but he shook his head. Jack pushed him harder against the wall, 'Give me the damn keys.'

'In my pocket,' the guard choked.

Jack grabbed his rifle and pointed it at him. 'Get them out. NOW.' He watched as the guard fished in his pockets and held out the keys. 'Now unlock them.' He nodded over to the two prisoners. The guard went obediently to the prisoner at the window and undid his cuffs, calling out in surprise as the prisoner sprang to life the moment his shackles were undone, quickly snatching the keys from the guard and clipping the cuffs on him, yanking his arm above his head and chaining him to the window in exactly the same position he had been in seconds earlier. Jack couldn't help but be impressed. He suppressed a half smile as he stood by the door, checking to see that no one was coming their way. When he looked back a second later, the pilot had been released and then prisoners were standing next to him, their gags pulled down around their necks, alert and ready.

Jack breathed a sigh of relief. At least these two seemed to get what was happening. That would make this next part a whole lot easier. He just hoped they were in good enough shape to run. He turned to the two men and gestured for them to follow, showing them with his hands his plan to scout around the edge of the houses and into the thicker cover of the undergrowth that ringed the manicured lawns. Their eyes were bright with understanding and he could see them quickly assessing their surroundings. They were good. He felt another welling of relief. Their chances of getting out of here were rising by the second. He held the guard's rifle firmly in his hands and took a deep breath. Then he was out of there, slipping around the side of the house, using it as a shield before he ran toward the cover of the thicker vegetatation. He could hear the rattling of their boots on the wooden boards as the two men followed him, the thick smoke covering their escape.


	30. Waiting for the Rain

Chapter 30

Waiting for the Rain

'_Sonofabitch.' _

The tarpaulin had snagged on another thorn. Hell, why was he even doing this? All his stuff was going to get trashed and besides, Rose was probably right – it wasn't any safer here in the jungle than it was on the beach – and there were fewer bugs on the beach. All these damn insects were eating him alive. Sawyer tugged tight on the final knot, hoping it would at least keep some of him dry once the rain started. His own little beach shelter looked kind of pitiful now, exposed and roofless. He wouldn't be able to take all his things, only another couple of armfuls, and the rest was going to get wet. On the next trip he scooped up a pile of books and magazines, cursing all the way back to his new jungle home. He still had to get the rest of his stash out from under his bed. _Crap_. Now everyone could see what he had – though they'd all broken into it anyways so he didn't know why he was even bothering hiding anything anymore. Habit, he guessed.

The rest of the beach camp were busy too – those that were moving. Half of them were following Rose's lead and staying where they were on the beach, and they were all hanging around like adolescents at a bus stop watching the rest of them with a wary stoicism, one eye on the gathering clouds, quietly calculating how soon before the clouds dumped a ton of rain on all of them and whether the shelters would go up in time. It looked like Boomer had broken rank and chosen to stay on the beach as well - that or she was too sick to even think about moving. She was sitting with her back against a tree next to Rose's camp, looking completely wiped out. Either she didn't care if the crazy plane hit her, or she knew it wouldn't. He gave her a long, appraising glance. Maybe he should do the smart thing and just camp next to her. She knew something. Though judging by the bullet wound on her face the girl had a death wish, and she was as likely to be laying herself out there waiting to get herself killed. Maybe being near her wasn't so smart after all.

'Well?'

Sawyer almost jumped out of his skin when he felt the breathy words being spoken right in his ear.

'Goddamn, _Sayid_!' he yelled, taking a full step back.

Sayid flicked a glance over to where he'd been watching Boomer, his eyes narrowing in disdain. 'We need to talk.'

'Well, _I_ need to move my stuff.' Sawyer dumped an armful of bedding down under his new roof and strode back to his tent. He could hear Sayid scuttling next to him, his smaller frame unable to keep up with him stride for stride.

'Why don't you tell me what really went on with Boomer and that plane?' Sayid hissed. Sawyer sighed loudly. He didn't want to do this. Not now. And definitely not with Sayid.

'I don't know what you're talking about.' He said finally.

'I think you do.'

Sawyer shook his head and bent down to collect the rest of this stash, pulling away the boards and lifting out his things. Sayid was watching him closely. 'Look, Sawyer, if you know something then I suggest you tell me. I'm sure it has become perfectly clear to you that these people are not who they say they are. Planes that are alive? Are they seriously expecting us to believe that that plane is some sort of creatures that flies itself?'

Sawyer stood up slowly. He had to admit that Sayid had a point. It was one thing to see the insides of that plane and wonder about what it was, another to try and convince them that it really was some sort of creature that– but hell, were Starbuck and the other two really saying the plane was alive? Starbuck had said it was flying itself, but that didn't mean she thought it was a living thing. There were plenty of planes that flew themselves – either with a pre-programmed route or by remote control - half the satellites in space went up that way, and he was sure the military had all sorts of probes and spy planes that-

'And all that talk about force fields and nuclear weapons. They're lying, Sawyer. I'm sure even _you_ can see that.'

Sawyer shook his head. Maybe that part was a little far fetched, but that still didn't mean they were lying – who knew how many nukes the military carried around without any of them knowing? But then they'd said they'd nuked something – some Base or other…

'And if there _was_ so much explosive on Boomer's plane to blow up half the island,' Sayid continued, 'why are they simply waiting for a rain shower before they go and deal with it? Does that even seem remotely plausible to you? They're not who they say they are. I'd be surprised if they were even in the military.'

'OK, so what if you're right? What do you want me to do about it?'

'Why don't you start by telling me exactly what Boomer did to that plane and how she got it to fly.'

Sawyer sighed. 'Alright. Look, I didn't see much. She went up to the plane and grabbed one of the slimy tendril things and then held it up to her face. It wasn't for long - one minute tops. Then she fell over and I took her back to her tent.'

'And that was it?'

'Yeah. That was it.'

Sayid's eye's narrowed. 'Well, she clearly did _something_ that made it take off and start shooting at us. My guess is that it's either a probe – in which case it is flying itself - possibly by remote control – or someone else has managed to sneak in and fly it. If it's a probe then someone is controlling it; if it is manned then someone else has been watching the plane and waiting until it was unguarded before they made their move. Either way, it doesn't look like our friends here are working alone.'

'Well, the stunt with the plane seemed to scare the crap out of them. I don't think they knew what the hell was goin' on.'

'All except Boomer.' Sayid said pointedly, looking over to where she was lying.

_Yeah. All except Boomer. _

'Look, why don't I go over there and talk to her, find out what else she knows?' Sawyer suggested.

'And why don't I?' Sayid's eyes were black coals, 'I think we both know who will be the most affective at getting answers.' The lightness of Sayid's tone belayed the threat. But no way was Sawyer letting that bastard anywhere near Boomer. Sure there was more going on here, but torturing her? No way.

'No.' he said firmly. '_I'll_ talk to her.'

'Very well. But if you can't get any answers, I assure you, I will.'

Sawyer grunted and bent down to grab another armful of his stuff, pushing past Sayid in disgust.

Boomer was lying by the kitchen area, her eyes were closed but they snapped open when he sat down next to her. She was wild with fever but he saw the fear and the panic there too. She knew exactly why he was here.

'Well, looks like that plane got to fly after all.' He smiled at her, watching the way she swallowed hard. Yeah, she knew something. 'So,' he continued conversationally, 'That plane. How about you tell me exactly what you did to it?'

Her eyes opened even wider. She was scared. Real scared. He could see her mentally figuring out whether or not she could cut and run, but before she could say anything he carried on, 'Look, Boomer, I like you. I really do, but you can do this the easy way or the hard way. Now Sayid there wants to get his hands on you and make you talk, and I'd rather you just told me what you know, 'cause if you don't, well, Sayid's methods ain't pretty.' He knew he was threatening her but, hell, Sayid was serious.

She shot him another quick, frightened glance, then her eyes spun over his shoulder to where he could sense Sayid watching them.

'I –' she stuttered. 'I-' she looked at him pleadingly, swallowing hard. 'I'm not sure what happened.' She said finally.

'You're not sure? Looked like something to me. One moment you were with that plane and the next, well, the damn thing took off and started shootin'. Now I get the feelin' you know something about that.'

She was silent for a moment, eyes darting about looking for some escape. Thankfully there was no sign of Starbuck or Racetrack. Last thing he wanted was Starbuck involved in this conversation. Boomer looked uneasily around. Once she realized no one else was coming to help her she turned to him and whispered, 'I didn't mean to, I just felt sorry for it.'

'Didn't mean to _what_, exactly?'

'To, um, to activate it.'

'Activate it? So you _did_ get the plane started?'

'No. No, I, um. I realigned it's matrix.' She closed her eyes.

'So it's like, some sort of probe and you re-programmed it?'

She nodded dumbly. OK, so that made sense. It was a probe. An unmanned probe. Now they were getting somewhere. 'What did you program it to do?'

She looked confused now. 'I don't know. It was numbers and shapes and I moved them around.'

'Uh?'

'In my mind.'

'In your _mind_?'

She nodded. 'I didn't mean to do it, I didn't realize what would happen.'

He sat back. He could see the fever was burning her up, her eyes shining with it. Had she been hallucinating? 'You were holding something.' He said more quietly.

'Yes, the Main Arterial Connector, it sparked across- I got a jolt from it.'

_She had a name for that thing_? He filed that away for future reference. 'So it shocked you?'

She nodded again.

'Right, so it gave you a shock and then what?'

'Numbers. Shapes. I told it to shut the door.'

'You talked to it?'

'In my mind.'

'In your mind. Alrighty. So you talked to it in your mind and you told it to shut it's door.'

'They kept hurting it. I didn't want them to hurt it anymore.' Her voice was a bare whisper, defeated.

'Okay.' He rocked back on his heels. 'Boomer, I-'

'I didn't know what would happen,' the words wrung out of her, 'I didn't mean to. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known, '

'Right.' This girl was sick, too sick to know what the hell she was saying. 'So you touched the – _thing_ – and it gave you a shock and then you saw numbers and stuff, and that's it?'

She nodded.

'OK.' He sighed heavily, pushing himself up. He brushed the sand off of his pants. Boomer was so out of it she didn't know what way was up. It was clear she was hallucinating. No way could they pin this on her.

'Are you going to tell anyone?' she asked anxiously.

'Ain't nothin' to tell,' he said quietly. He paused, 'Look, you just rest easy, OK?' He could see by the look of her that the fever was getting worse. Those damn pills weren't strong enough. They weren't working. He sighed, turning back towards his half built shelter.

'Well?' Sayid was at his side immediately.

'She didn't do nothin',' Sawyer replied gruffly.

'And what brings you to that conclusion?'

'Look, she's sick, crazy sick. Whatever happened to that plane, it sure wasn't her.'

'What exactly did she say?'

Sawyer rounded on him. 'Look, she held onto one of the long stringy things and it gave her a shock. That's it. She's sick. Real sick. The damn plane just zapped her and she thinks that's what maybe got it started, but she didn't do nothin'.'

Sayid grunted. 'If it's a probe it might have a flight plan already programmed in. But that doesn't tell us why it started firing on us. I think we need to speak to the rest of them. Where is Starbuck?'

Sawyer shrugged, 'I don't know, I ain't seen her – she was building her shelter over there.' He nodded over to the little hollow she'd made in the bushes. It wasn't going to keep the rain out. Maybe she'd come and join him under his tarp – second thoughts, perhaps not. She'd probably shoot him in his sleep.

'She and Racetrack went off somewhere.' Claire's voice chipped in. She was sitting under her own makeshift tent, Aaron in her arms.

'Where'd they go?'

Clare shrugged, 'I don't know. They didn't say. They were checking their guns, though.'

'I think they went to Boomer's plane to turn off the beacon.' said Charlie.

Sayid let out a low growl. 'Why didn't you tell me they'd gone?'

'You didn't ask.' Charlie snapped back.

'Well, I guess we go after them.' He looked pointedly at Sawyer. 'Do you know where the plane is?'

Sawyer shook his head, 'Nope.'

Sayid sighed dramatically and pushed his way to where Boomer was still propped against the tree. Her eyes opened slowly, then her whole body flinched when she saw Sayid leaning over her.

'Where's your plane, the one you came in?' She pushed herself back into the tree, looking around desperately. She found Sawyer's face, her eyes pleading. _Sonofabitch._ She was scared senseless. He'd shouldn't have frightened her into talking – now she was freaking out. He pushed passed Sayid and bent down in front of her.

'Hey, Boomer, no one's gonna hurt you - we just need to go check out your plane. 'You know where it is?'

She licked her lips, glancing over at Sayid and then speaking to Sawyer. Her voice was weak. 'On high ground – there was a view of sea – and we went East before we found you.'

'How far?' demanded Sayid.

Boomer thought a moment, 'I don't know. We walked for days, but – Racetrack thought it was only about ten clicks or so.'

'_Clicks_? What the hell's a click?'

'A kilometer. So ten kilometers – that's about six miles.' Sayid was already scanning the horizon, totally oblivious to the state Boomer was in. 'So we get to the high ground above the beach and then go East along the ridge. Hopefully we should intersect with the crash site. Let's hope it's not too far.'

Sawyer nodded, one eye still on Boomer. Her gun was gone. Starbuck must have taken it with her. _Smart_.

'Here.' Sayid was behind him again, shoving something into his hands. 'You might need this.' The feel of the rifle against his palm fell good, solid. Sawyer looked up in surprise.

'Hey, don't I get a gun?' Charlie stood in front of Sayid.

'Who says you're coming with us?'

'Well I think it needs more than two of you – I mean there's two of them…'

Sayid thought a moment then nodded. 'We only have the rifle - and this.' Sayid pulled the handgun out of the back of his pants and started checking it. 'So no, you can't have a gun.' He looked over at Sawyer. 'Ready?'

They set off as the first few drops of rain began falling. He couldn't believe he was doing this again. Another half-assed dash into the jungle. No planning. No thought. Another knee-jerk reaction. Why in hell was he even agreeing to this? Because Sayid was right, he couldn't let Starbuck and Racetrack find that plane on their own, that was why. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself after Charlie and Sayid, grimacing as the rain fell harder, drenching him in seconds.

00000

Juliet sat staring at the little ripples that brushed gently against the jetty. They made tiny little bumps in the water. A piece of broken wood was thump thumping on the side of one of the upright poles – all that was left of the quay. She could hear shouts coming from the compound, but she couldn't see much through the trees and bushes. But she could clearly see a pall of thick black smoke snaking its way skyward above the tree line.

She sat without moving, paralyzed by the enormity of what had just happened. Her one chance - her _one_ chance - of getting off this Island lay in a pile of floating trash and an oil spill snaking it's way out to sea. The sub was gone, and with it, her hope of ever getting away from this place. Away from _him. _Ben wouldn't let her go now. Everything was different and she was sure that Ben would use the crisis to make things play out his way.

She wasn't going home after all.

She stood up and carefully picked her way through the debris to the devastation of the compound. Her house was in flames. There went her CD collection. Not that she really cared; there was nothing here that really mattered to her.

It was going to rain. She looked up at the sky, darkening now. Maybe the rain would put the flames out.

'Ben wants to see you.' Tom's voice. She didn't turn around.

'Of course he does,' she said, her tone deadpan.

When she stepped into his room Ben was sitting in a wheelchair. She could see he was in pain. At least she could take some satisfaction from that.

'Juliet,' his eyes crawled over the cut of her blouse and he licked his lips quickly. She felt the familiar disgust turning into a sort of nausea in her guts. 'Jack's gone, I take it?' he asked archly, then gave her that creepy half sneer half smile. 'And he didn't take you with him? Looks like he didn't want you after all.'

She held his gaze unflinchingly, holding down the nausea and the rush of memories; Goodwin's corpse, Ben's satisfied smirk. She resisted the urge to vomit.

He sighed, 'Well, I guess their little friends came and blew the sub to hell.' He smiled at her. She didn't say anything. They stood watching each other silently.

'My house is burning. Can I go?' was all she asked.

He caught the double meaning, looked away for a beat, staring quietly out of the window at the chaos of the compound. 'No. You can't _go_, Juliet, we have a _situation_,' his voice quivered with that false emotion he saved for moments of gravitas. All it did was make her hate him more. 'Whoever they are, they know where we live. We're moving the camp.'

She bit her lip, nodded, then turned to leave.

'I haven't finished yet,' his voice recalled her and like a dog on a leash she turned back towards him.

'I have work for you, Juliet,' he smiled again, a creepy, crafty smile that told her he knew exactly how far he could push her and how much he enjoyed having that power. She knew then with a certainty that he would never let her leave this island. That look was the same he'd given her when he'd showed her Goodwin's body, the same twisted smile of satisfaction when he'd seen how devastated she'd been at Goodwin's death. What chilled her most was how far he was prepared to go to keep her here. 'You're mine.' He had told her then, as she stood looking over at Goodwin's body - as if that was all the justification he needed for the way he'd plotted Goodwin's death.

Goodwin had been the one good thing she'd had, an oasis of sanity in this crazy place. How could _be_ here, without him? And she'd been marked now. She'd never belong with these people. She'd seen the looks she'd been getting over the past few days. An eye for an eye. She'd killed Danny Pickett. Any illusion that she fitted in, that she was part of this group of people had evaporated once she fired that shot. No matter that it had been under Ben's orders, that she had been acting to save his life. But as usual, he played her with a skill and a cunning that she could never match.

They both knew he had the measure of her. Maybe she should have let Danny kill James Ford and the girl, that way Jack would have let Ben die and she would have been free of him. But she knew now that Jack wasn't the sort of doctor to let a patient die. And despite what Jack thought of her, and her lack of conscience about the pilots, she couldn't just stand there and let Danny shoot James and Kate in cold blood. There had been something about them, something about the way they'd let themselves care for each other that she had wanted to protect. She'd had that with Goodwin. She wasn't going to let Ben Linus destroy it from the whole world.

'Juliet?' his voice was impatient, demanding. 'Are you listening?' She turned slowly to face him.

'Yes, Ben,' she said softly, 'I'm listening.'


	31. Rain

Chapter 31

Rain

The rain was coming down hard by the time they reached the shoreline. It made it harder going, but Jack was glad of it – at least the heavy rain would obscure their trail if they were being followed. He'd taken Juliet's advice to follow the coastline south. She had said it was safer, but it also meant they could travel all night without losing their way. The last thing they needed was to start walking in circles. No, following the coastline was a good idea, he just hoped the two men he had with him were up to the long hike. So far neither of them had spoken, and now that the rain was falling heavily, they would have had to yell over the sound of the pounding water to make themselves heard. Both men seemed content to trudge behind him in silence, pushing resolutely through the falling sheets of water and struggling through the sand with the rain slamming down hard. It was hard going, but once the rain eased off it would get easier.

He had no idea how far it was to the survivor's camp. They'd drugged him when he'd first been captured and moved him to the smaller Island, and then he'd traveled by motor launch from there to Ben's camp, so he still wasn't clear how the survivor's camp fitted into his mental map of the Island. He just knew it was South, and at least a day's walk away. He wished now he'd gotten around to asking Juliet how far it was. He should have asked her. But then there were a lot of things he should have asked - like how in hell she'd _really_ wound up there and the real reason why she couldn't leave. Because one thing was certain, she wanted off of this place as much as any of them, if not more. She didn't belong there, and she certainly didn't belong with _them._

He glanced around, checking to see how the two men with him were doing. The one dressed in the flight suit caught his eye immediately and gave him a curt nod. Of the two, this one looked in the better shape. The other one – the one with the gash on his head – might be struggling soon. His steps weren't as sure and he was nursing the arm that had been yanked up above his head all day where he'd been cuffed to that window. They were sharp, though; efficient and well trained. They'd been right behind him in his rushed escape from the Clubhouse, shadowing him closely, automatically taking up defensive positions around him while he paused at the fence to key in the numbers.

He held tightly onto the rifle he'd taken from the guard, adjusting the day pack on his back as his feet sank awkwardly into the wet sand. He had enough food and water to get them through the afternoon and then the night. He was hoping to put a good few hours' distance between themselves and Ben's camp before they would have to rest. They just had to keep going, keep moving, push on as far and as fast as they could and hope that the disruption at the camp had created enough chaos for them to escape. The bigger questions – like who these men were and what that plane was doing bombing the camp – would have to wait until they were back at his own camp among his own people. He just had to get them there fast. At that thought he increased the pace, pushing harder through the wall of water.

He could do this.

00000

Well, they'd been right about the frakking rain. She'd scoffed at the way they had peered up at the sky as if it was about to drop bombs on them or something. She kind of got it now; when it rained here, it rained _hard_. She shifted awkwardly in the undergrowth, trying to keep her firearms as dry as possible.

Finding the crash site would have been simple if Boomer and Racetrack had done their job properly. Racetrack's version of where they'd ditched the plane had been a garbled mess of half memories and her surprisingly overactive imagination. Starbuck had only been able to piece it all together from the description Boomer had given her of the view she'd had from the top of the cliff. Not that matching up the view had been easy in the blinding rain, but she'd finally gotten somewhere and now here they were, crouched in the undergrowth watching the crash site to see if there were any Toasters nearby. She squinted through the gray mass of falling water. Boomer had been right about her plane not flying again. How in hell they had gotten out was anybody's guess. The Raptor was just a pile of twisted metal wrapped around a large tree. No way was it going to fly again – but maybe if she could get it powered up they could get some of the ECO controls working and at least get a bead on that dampening field.

But first, the Beacon - before the Raider came back and shot at the remains of the Raptor and sparked off all the live equipment and ordinance it was still carrying.

She tapped Racetrack on the shoulder, gritting her jaw as Racetrack jumped in surprise. How the frack had this girl even gotten through Basic? Her head was miles away. Sure, she seemed oblivious to danger, but she only got there by completely checking out. 'Cover me,' she mouthed, making sure that the message filtered into the part of Racetrack's brain that was still functioning. The nod in reply was as much encouragement as she was going to get, so she pushed herself up, pulling out both her sidearm and Boomer's, holding one in each hand as she broke cover and skirted up to the high ground where she could vaguely see the Beacon, sitting squat in the gray haze of pounding rain at the top of the rise.

At least Boomer and Racetrack had set the Beacon up properly. They _had_ put it in a good spot – for the Beacon. A lousy spot for trying to get the damn thing out of there without being seen. She crouched low, deciding on speed rather than stealth. There wasn't enough cover for her to do this any other way. And now her frakking leg was sore because it didn't like running at a crouch, but she pushed hard, hoping that at least the rain would blur her outline enough to get her in and out without being seen.

The Beacon itself was attached to a stand that had been generously weighted down with a pile of large stones. Why in hell had Boomer and Racetrack fudged everything else except this? She grunted as she heaved the last rock off the base, finally revealing the switching mechanism so she could turn the frakking thing off. Once the winking light was gone she breathed a sigh of relief, grabbed the Beacon by its stand and hauled it back down the slope, needing both hands to get the thing back to where Racetrack was still hidden in the bushes.

'See anything?' she asked Racetrack as she slid in beside her, breathless with adrenaline.

'No. Nothing.' Racetrack put her head to one side as if the thought had just occurred to her that she was supposed to be looking for something.

Starbuck crouched down next to her, pushing the Beacon down by her side.

'So what now?' Racetrack asked. 'Do we need to get the Cylon transponder as well? – and what about the transponder on the Raptor, isn't that still working? Don't we need to turn that off too?'

Starbuck gave her a withering glare. _Unbelievable_. Did Racetrack pay attention to _anything_? 'The Raptor's transponder would have been disabled on Galactica when the Cylon transponder was fitted– it's switched off, so you don't need to worry about that.'

'Oh.' Racetrack sounded surprised.

'But we do need to find the Cylon transponder and disable it.' Starbuck checked Racetrack's expression to see if she'd actually understood.

'We tried to break it after the crash,' said Racetrack thoughtfully, 'I think they're indestructible.'

'OK,' she felt like she was talking to a five year old, 'Well, we still need to find it and at least get it further away from the- _frak_,' She grabbed Racetrack by the shoulder and pushed her head down. On the rise she had clearly seen the outline of several figures coming straight towards them.

'_There! There!'_ came a high pitched, excited voice. _'We've found it!' _

Starbuck sighed. _Charlie._ Typical. Of course they all had to come along. Last thing she needed was to worry about a pile of frakking civilians getting caught in the middle of a shooting match if any Toasters showed up. She almost yelled out to them in warning, and then closed her mouth – what if they really were Cylons? She certainly had her suspicions about how they had found their way here – their story of being pushed off course, _this far off course_, sounded like bull to her. So she waited, watching to see what they would do when they found the plane. But she pulled out a sidearm just in case; either they _were_ Cylons, in which case she'd start shooting, or they weren't and they were walking into a trap – in which case she'd start shooting. She could sense Racetrack watching her curiously.

'Cover them!' she hissed to Racetrack, who paused uncertainly before she too held up her sidearm, scanning around Charlie and his position. _Godsdamn_, but getting Racetrack to act like a soldier was like – _frak_, like nothing she could think of. Of all the people to be stuck with, she was here with Boomer and frakking Racetrack. Boomer had spent the last two days looking scared out of her wits and Racetrack had probably checked out years ago. Where in the hell was Helo anyways? He was Boomer's frakking ECO, he should have been here - would have been with Boomer if the heroic idiot hadn't dumped himself on Caprica to do the noble thing and save Baltar's ass. She could really have done with him right now. With _anyone_ except these two clowns. She wasn't even going to think about how much better it would have been with Apollo here… _frak_ it, _focus, Kara. _She shook the rain out of her hair as Sayid and Sawyer came into view. She held her breath as Sayid approached the plane, scanning around the area, suspicion written all over his face. It suddenly occurred to her that he looked like he knew what he was doing. Something about the way he methodically checked the area. Yeah, he'd been trained. Military trained. She quickly re-defined her assessment of him. He was more than a paranoid jerk with a stick up his ass. She'd watch him more carefully from now on.

Sawyer was sauntering behind him, oblivious to any danger, looking curiously around. He was carrying a rifle, slung loosely over one shoulder as if he didn't expect to meet anything hostile. She couldn't help but smile as she watched him look thoughtfully up at the sky, and then wander nonchalantly up to the high ground to stare out over at the view. _Frak_, if there were any toasters nearby surely they'd have be crawling all over here by now? The rain had eased and she could clearly see his form silhouetted against the skyline. If there were any Toasters around they'd have seen and heard them all by now. Looked like the place was clean. She relaxed a notch. She hadn't even been sure that what had chased Boomer and Racetrack had been a Cylon. The conversations she'd had with the people on the beach had confirmed that there were some crazy animals in this place – bears and boars and this smoke thing. Wild animals. Not Cylons.

'Sawyer! Come and look at this.' Her eyes snapped back to the Raptor as she heard Sayid's voice, clipped, commanding, calling from inside the wrecked plane.

She glanced back to the rise where Sawyer was glaring over towards the plane, resentment written all over him. Nolove lost between those two. He ate up the ground in a few strides and disappeared inside the plane.

She heard someone give a low whistle, 'Very nice.' Sawyer's voice, 'You think you can get any of it working?'

'I don't know, but this is a very sophisticated array of equipment. If I can get some power to it, we might be able to get a message out. Let me try-'

_Oh no you don't. _ No way was _anyone_ messing with that Raptor. Starbuck leapt up quickly and launched herself towards the plane. 'Leave that alone,' she said breathlessly, tensing as Sayid spun around when he heard her voice. 'Don't touch anything – I don't want you screwing it up.'

Sayid recovered quickly when he recognized who she was, and then didn't seem at all surprised that she was there. 'I think you'll find that I know what I'm doing,' he said evenly.

'I think I'll find that you don't.'

'I was a communications officer for over five years in the Republican guard. I think I can handle this.'

Starbuck glared back. 'No.' she said simply.

'Hey.' Sawyer held up his hands, 'Let's not fight now, boys and girls. So you found the plane too, huh? You get that Beacon thing switched off?'

Starbuck nodded. 'We still need to find the Cylon transponder.'

'OK. So why don't we do that then? Where is it?'

'Boomer threw it over that cliff.' Racetrack pointed over at the high ground.

'Yeah, well, I've had a look over there and there's no going over it, so we'll have to go around. Look, it's going to get dark in a couple hours – we don't have time to mess around here, so why don't you two quit arguing so's we can all go get the Cylon thing right now?' Sawyer gave them both a false smile and raised his eyebrows at her. He was right. The transponder was their first priority. She would have to sort out the Raptor later.

By the time they had skirted around to the bottom of the cliff, the rain had stopped and the sky was brightening. It had taken them a good half hour to find their way to the bottom of the cliff and then they had spent another half hour or so scrabbling around in the undergrowth before Starbuck had finally seen it, lying on it's side, the unmistakable white shape eerie in the half light of the jungle.

'That's it?' Charlie pushed his face to it, peering at it closely.

'Yeah.' She pulled it away from him.

'Looks like a smoke alarm.'

'Well, it isn't.'

'Take your word for it. So what now?'

'We lose it as far away from the Raptor as we can.'

'Can't you just turn it off?'

'Nope.'

'So smash it then.'

'We tried that,' cut in Racetrack.

'I don't want to break it,' said Starbuck, 'It might be useful. I just need get it far enough away from the Raptor so the Raider can't find it.'

'Well we don't want it near the camp, do we?'

Charlie was beginning to irritate the crap out of her. 'No. I'll take it away from the beach-'

'I'll go with you.' Sayid stepped forward. 'If we take it over the other side of this high ground, deep in the jungle to the north, that should be far enough.'

'How long we got before it get's dark?' Charlie was looking up at the sky. The clouds had given way to blue skies, but the sun's rays were slanting at an angle that suggested dusk wasn't so far away.

'An hour, two tops.' Sawyer squinted at the lowering sun, the rifle still slung over one shoulder. 'Whichever way you look at it, don't look like you'd be back before dark.'

'So we'd better get going then.' Sayid pulled out his firearm and checked the chamber, 'Sawyer? You coming too?' Sawyer hesitated, looking quickly between her and Sayid. Then he nodded quickly. _Yeah_. Who knew what she'd do to the guy if he left them alone? Kill him, probably.

'Well, shall I go back and check on Boomer?' Racetrack asked uncertainly, 'I've got the field med kit now,' Racetrack held it up to demonstrate. 'So I can give her something stronger for that fever.' Starbuck hesitated. She didn't want to be left alone with Sawyer and Sayid. Sawyer wasn't too bad, but she didn't trust Sayid at all. She could do with Racetrack as backup, but whatever medicines these people had given Boomer didn't seem to be working. She needed the medicine in that kit, and she didn't trust any of them except Racetrack to give it to her. Not that Racetrack was exactly the paragon of competence, but she had been trained to do it. In Basic. _Crap. _At least she could read. Hopefully the instructions were clear enough.

Starbuck nodded reluctantly. Hell, it wasn't as if having Racetrack along with her was going to give her any real backup - if anything, getting her out of the way was probably a good thing, at least she wouldn't have to be distracted by Racetrack when she should be keeping a close eye on Sawyer and Sayid. And besides, the way Boomer had been looking she needed that medicine fast. 'You'll need to give her the antibiotic injection, yeah?'

Racetrack just bit her lip. _Frak, did she even know which one that was?_

'Not the morphine… the blue one, yeah?'

Racetrack was fumbling inside the kit. Starbuck sighed and stepped forward, grabbing the kit off her. Hadn't the girl retained anything from Basic Training? Maybe she thought she'd never need it. _Lightweight_. She fished out the syringe in the blue packet. 'Here, _this one_. It says _for infected wounds_. You need to find a vein. _Got it_?'

Racetrack swallowed hard and then nodded. Starbuck put the syringe back in the med kit and handed the whole thing back to Racetrack with a long, slow, sigh. She almost felt sorry for Boomer.

'Well, shall I go back with Racetrack then?' Charlie was asking uncertainly.

'Yeah,' Starbuck said quickly; having Sayid and Sawyer along was plenty.

'Right then. Well, I'll meet you guys back at the beach.' He turned to go, Racetrack following him more uncertainly. Hell, she probably didn't even know the way back. Starbuck bit her lip. _Great_. She gave a curt nod to Sawyer and Sayid and started walking in the opposite direction. If either of tried anything she'd frakking take them both down.


	32. Walk on the Wild Side

Chapter 32

Walk on the Wild Side

'She always like that?'

'Huh?' Racetrack turned to Charlie in surprise, 'Who?'

'Starbuck. She always so… I don't know… crazy?'

Racetrack looked at him curiously and then turned her attention back to the trail in front of her. She shrugged noncommittally. 'I guess.'

'And rude,' continued Charlie, 'Does she always talk to you like that?'

Racetrack gave him another sideways look, a frown creasing her brow. She shrugged again. 'That's just Starbuck. She talks to everyone like that.'

'Right. I got it. Control freak. She looks wired though - you think she's on drugs?'

Racetrack's sharp look had a hint amusement this time, but she shook her head, fighting the smile that was beginning to tug at the corners of her mouth.

He grinned over at her. That tiny smile was enough to encourage him to keep going. 'Is she seriously like that all the time?' he continued. 'You know, the '_I'm going to murder you the minute you turn around' _thing that she has going? The only thing I can think of is that she's on drugs – the paranoia, the aggression; maybe she's just desperate for her next fix. And there aren't any drugs on the Island.'

Racetrack looked away. He could see she was trying hard not to join in. OK, so now she was _definitely_ doing the loyal soldier thing. It was getting pretty obvious that she'd been told not to speak to them because she hadn't been like this before Starbuck started chucking her weight around. They walked on in an awkward silence for a minute or so before he tried again. 'She's a pilot then?'

'Who?'

'Starbuck – I mean she turned up inside that goopy plane and she wasn't wearing a flying suit or anything. I just wondered if she was a pilot or just a passenger.'

'She's a Viper pilot.'

'Viper?'

'It's a fighter plane.'

'Oh. Right.'

'She's the best,' added Racetrack.

'The best? What? _Fanatic_?'

'The best pilot – the best Viper pilot anyway.'

'And that puts her in charge of you and Boomer?'

Racetrack thought for a moment, her head tilted to one side. 'I guess so – I mean, she's a Viper pilot, so yeah, she outranks us.'

He pushed aside a branch to let her through and then walked along beside her. 'OK, so I'm getting the picture now – Starbuck's the big fish in the tiny pond, and you and Boomer are just teeny tiny fishes, yeah, I can see her like this big scary shark telling you all what to do… ' he waved his arms in the air to show just how huge Starbuck was. He caught her eye, she was watching him with a frown of amusement, but didn't say anything. 'Hey, it's nothing to be ashamed of - it's the same for us. See, there's me and Hurley swimming around at the bottom like tiny minnows,' he moved his hands like they were tiny fish swimming in the sea. 'Then Sayid and Sawyer and Kate above us,' he held his arms higher, 'then of course there used to be Jack and Locke up there, as well as Eko. We had lots of big fish all arguing about who was in charge. Know what though? It's much more fun at the bottom – we swim around, have a bit of a laugh. It's pretty chilled down here.'

Racetrack smiled.

'Now _that_,' said Charlie, pointing a finger straight at her, 'Is the first time I've ever really seen you smile. It suits you. You should do it more often.'

She shook her head slowly, still smiling.

'You were a lot more friendly before Starbuck got dragged out of that death plane. Did she tell you not to talk to us or something?'

The smile disappeared and she sighed. 'Something like that.'

'Where's the fun in that? We don't bite, you know. Well, except for Sayid, but we're not all like him – most of us don't even _like_ him. I mean, just because you crash on an Island in the middle of bloody nowhere with a random group of strangers doesn't mean that you're going to get along with them all, now does it?'

She paused a moment as she stepped delicately over a fallen branch. He could see her thinking furiously.

'Hurley likes you.' He said with a smile, grinning wider when he saw her steps falter and the blush creeping up her face. _Bingo._

'What?'

'Hurley, the big guy.'

'Yeah, I know who he is.'

'Well, he likes you.'

'Likes me?'

'Yeah, as in _likes_ you. But don't say I told you.'

'He told you that?' She had stopped on the trail and was staring at him, looking painfully flustered.

'We're friends.' Charlie shrugged. 'He's a great guy – he's sound, you know? I just thought I'd put in a word.'

She shook her head again as if she wasn't quite believing what she was hearing.

'Look,' Charlie continued, 'I don't know what's going on in Starbuck's crazy brain, but we're all pretty harmless – OK, except for Sayid - but the rest of us… And, you know, it would be nice to get to know you better. It just seems a shame, when we could all be getting along. And Hurley _really_ wants to get to know you, so…'

She bit her lip.

'Racetrack isn't your real name, is it?'

She looked uncomfortable, shifting the medical bag over her shoulder. There was a long pause where he thought she wouldn't answer. 'It's Margaret,' she said finally. 'Well - Maggie.'

'Maggie,' he rolled the sound around in his mouth for a moment. 'Suits you.'

'Thanks.'

'Well, hello Maggie,' He stuck his hand out. She stopped. 'It's nice to meet you.'

She maneuvered the bag again and shook his hand for a moment, then pulled away. Suddenly she seemed shy. It was sweet. She was still smiling, chewing on her bottom lip as she looked away. Charlie grinned at her, walking along with a spring in his step. The evening light was slanting down through the trees, throwing color into the bushes and shrubs along the trail.

'It's not far to the beach now,' Charlie squinted up at the sky, 'We'll easily get there before dark. Looks like we might even get a nice sunset.' He pointed up at the sky where the clouds were already tinged red, snaking color above them.

'It _is_ nice here,' Racetrack said softly. 'All the trees and the sun. If I had to die anywhere,' she continued almost dreamily, 'I think I'd rather it was here.'

'Hey, no one's dying OK?' Charlie stopped and touched her arm. 'You're not going to die – none of us are. We're going to make it off here. I'm certainly not dying now – I've got too much to live for. People who need me.'

'Like Claire and Aaron.' She was watching him with a soft smile.

'Yeah. They need me. So no one's dying.'

They carried on walking for a while until she broke the silence. 'You and Claire,' she said shyly, 'It's nice.'

Charlie felt his own cheeks reddening. 'Yeah. I really like her. I mean we haven't known each other all that long – but…'

'But Aaron's your son, right?'

'No. No, he's not. Some git in Australia who abandoned her. What a prick. I mean, look at her, she's beautiful. What kind of guy would do that? But it doesn't matter, you know, I love Aaron. It doesn't make any difference to me.'

'That's really nice. You all seem really, well, _happy_ together.'

'Yeah. We are - hey, I didn't clock you as an incurable romantic.'

'Hurley seems nice, too.' she said quietly.

'I'll tell him you said that.' He threatened playfully. She just bit her lip again, the same coy smile playing on her lips as she looked away.

A half hour later and they had reached the beach camp. That plane hadn't been as far away as they'd thought – only a couple of miles inland and downhill most of the way back. By the end they'd fallen into an easy silence, and once they could smell and see the beach their steps had picked up. The sun was shining now, drying everything out and warming them. Racetrack went straight to Boomer's little shelter, putting the medical bag down next to her and rifling inside it for the medicine. She pulled it out and frowned.

'What does it say?' Charlie crouched next to her, watching her carefully.

Racetrack was staring at the little blue package with the syringe inside and frowning. 'I have to inject it into a vein _slowly_,' she said. 'But I think it needs to be mixed with the saline first.' She pulled two small vials out of the packet and squinted to read the tiny writing on each one.

'You've done this before, though, right?' Charlie was looking anxiously from Boomer back to her. Boomer didn't look good. She was out of it, either asleep or unconscious, he wasn't sure which.

She shook her head. 'I watched someone _pretend_ to do this once in Basic Training - but that was years ago.'

'Ok. Here, let's have a look' She handed him the packet and Charlie carefully read through the instructions. 'I think we need to wrap something around the top of her arm – look, this little picture here has someone tying something – it's a bit small to see it properly.'

She leant over to have a look at it. 'There's a tourniquet in the med kit. Hang on.' She leant back and rifled inside the bag, pulling out a black cuff.

'Ah, right. OK. So that goes round her arm and then it says you need to find a vein… no you need to mix the saline in with this one, I think. Crap, who wrote these instructions?'

'Dude – what happens if you get it wrong?' Hurley was hovering at the entrance to the tent, watching them both from a safe distance.

'You can come in, you know Hurley, there's room.' Charlie offered.

'Naw – um, blood and me… well, I kinda pass out, you know?'

Racetrack gave him an amused smile. 'You _pass out_?'

'Yeah – and I'm a big guy, I… well.'

Charlie picked up the syringe and the two vials. 'So both of these need to go in the same tube?'

Racetrack turned away from Hurley and stared at them. 'I don't know,' she said uncertainly. 'Maybe we should wait for Starbuck…'

'She could be hours – and she and Sayid could be killing each other for all we know, and Boomer looks awful, she may not _have_ hours.'

'Is everything alright?' Sun was leaning over the edge of the shelter, looking at then all with concern.

'Racetrack's got some medicine from the crashed plane. We just need to figure out how to inject Boomer with it.'

'Can I help?'

Racetrack turned around. Her eyes must have said something because Sun came and crouched down low, gently taking the package from her and reading the instructions carefully. They watched as she quietly examined the blue packet.

'OK, I think I know what to do. We need to put a tourniquet around her arm first…' she gently pushed up Boomer's sleeve. Boomer groaned, but didn't open her eyes as she deftly wrapped the cuff around her upper arm. '… and then these two clip together so that the needle goes on the end, _like that,'_ she clipped the two vials together, 'Oh, I see, It mixes them automatically. OK, now I have to find a vein…' her muttering got quieter as she concentrated on what she was doing. Charlie took a deep breath. He knew enough about injections and veins – he would have done it himself, but…

'Right, now _slowly_.' She eased in the plunger. 'Hold her down,' she said quickly as Boomer groaned and tried to straighten her arm. Charlie shifted over to her right side and held her firmly by the shoulders while Racetrack had both hands on her wrist.

Sun kept the needle steady, pushing down in the plunger infinitesimally slowly. After what seemed like several long, slow minutes, she finally pulled out the needle and straightened up, grabbing a swab from the kit and pushing down firmly on the puncture wound.

'I think you missed your calling, Sun. You should have been a doctor.' Charlie was watching her approvingly. 'So what now?'

'We wait. It should begin to work quite quickly as it's going directly into her blood stream. It says here that the affects should last twelve hours.'

'Right – so what do we do after the twelve hours? What does it say?'

'Um… '_Make the patient comfortable and then wait for evacuation to a field hospital_.'

'It's a field med kit,' Racetrack explained. The idea is that no one stays injured more than two days before they get evacuated.'

'Great. How many of those are there in the kit?'

'Only Three. And we've used one now, so two left.'

'So we wait twelve hours and then give her another?'

'Yes. But we'll need someone to watch her through the night. Perhaps we can take shifts? I'll start now.' Sun settled herself next to Boomer, gently stroking the hair away from her forehead. 'She has a high fever,' she observed quietly, 'We have to keep her cool and make sure she has water.'

'I'll get some more water and a wet cloth.' Hurley shambled off to the kitchen area.

Racetrack looked down at Boomer anxiously. 'You think she'll be OK?'

Sun smiled gently at her, 'I hope so. I suppose if that one doesn't work we can always give her another one.'

Racetrack nodded.

'Hey Maggie, c'mon, let's get you something to eat.' Charlie touched her arm gently as Hurley came back with the water and the cloth.

'Bernard killed a boar,' he said, 'I could go get you some?'

'Thanks.' She smiled at him, 'Sounds good.'

00000

He should have gagged that guard. It was such a basic mistake. _Stupid_. Really, _really_ dumb. What in hell had he been thinking? Well, he clearly hadn't been thinking - and there wasn't any excuse, he'd gone over possible escapes in his mind for hours while he'd lain there, gagged and helpless. Then he'd stuffed it up in those five seconds between release and freedom, making the rookie mistake because he'd been so desperate to get out of that room. He really should have gagged that guard. It was this sort of attention to detail that made the difference between success and failure – between the guard yelling for help so that someone got to him in two minutes and a gagged and silent guard who was only found a half hour or an hour later. Time they could have used to get away. He silently cursed himself again.

Now that the rain had stopped, the tension among their tiny group of three had risen exponentially. The man ahead – Apollo called him the 'doc' in his mind as he obviously had some medical training the way he'd sewn up the Chief's head – was getting increasingly nervous, looking around carefully and pushing the pace faster now the rain wasn't hitting them hard. He kept glancing behind them, around them, into the bushes, out at the sea, the rifle always at the ready. It was making even Apollo nervous, and he was trained for this sort of thing. But he got the point. Up until now, the rain had been covering their tracks and masking any sounds they were making, turning their outlines into grey blurs, but now the sun was burning off the cloud cover and they were clear marks, dark shapes silhouetted against the shoreline, too clearly visible, with no pounding rain to cover the sounds of their footfalls at the edge of the surf. But he understood why they were still splashing in the shallows – no tracks. The Doc must be concerned about someone following their footprints because there was far more cover at the edge of the beach by the trees and he was resolutely leading them here, where they were more exposed. Besides, he could see that the sand was softer by the trees, which would slow them down, and the firm, wet sand where the tide was active was quicker and less tiring underfoot. All things considered, moving fast along the edge of the surf seemed like a reasonable plan – provided they could all keep up this crazy pace. And provided nothing spotted them from the sea or the air.

The Doc stopped suddenly, eyeing the sky and the blazing sun a moment and then quickly fishing into his pack and producing a bottle of water. He silently handed it to the Chief, a look of concern over his face. The Chief was struggling. He'd been through hell on Kobol and the man had been in pieces over Boomer's death. Apollo wondered if he'd even slept at all over the past week on Galactica. That wound on his head wasn't helping either, and then factor in the fact that they'd both been drugged - Apollo could still feel the effects, a residual woozy feeling like his head was still stuffed with cotton wool. Yeah, it was no wonder that the Chief was struggling now. Apollo noticed how he rubbed his left arm where it'd been cuffed above his head for hours and the way the Chief took the water, wincing as he let go of his left hand to clasp the bottle. He just hoped the Chief had enough left in him to keep up with the Doc's crazy pace. He watched as he drank thirstily, handing back the bottle with a stiff nod of thanks. The Doc held it up to Apollo who took a few more grateful sips. This water might need to last. The Doc pulled out some food from his pack – some bread and cheese = and passed some to each of them. Then he put the pack back on his back and started walking again, chewing on the bread and expecting them to follow.

Apollo exchanged a glance with the Chief, giving a small, relieved smile when the Chief nodded that he was OK. As they started walking briskly behind the Doc, neither of them said a word. They hadn't spoken since their escape – partly because he and the Chief had been either gagged or escaping, but mostly because both of them had seen enough of the new Cylon Centurions to have the good sense keep as silent as possible; these models were far and away superior to the ones that had been around during the Cylon War forty years ago. These were sleeker, faster, their sensor arrays a lot more sensitive. No way was he risking their voices being picked up by a search party inland. Both he and the Chief had experienced the full horror of the new Centurions when he'd gotten the survey team off of Kobol. So now neither was going to say a word since they left that room, and it meant he hadn't had a chance to talk to the Chief at all. But now really wasn't the time. The wind was blowing in from the sea and their voices would carry inland.

From what he read of the Chief's report from Kobol, it was clear that the Cylon Centurions were calibrated to pick up the sounds of human voices, and probably the sound of their footsteps too. So He tried to be as silent as possible; he was even trying to breathe quietly, keeping the splashing underfoot to a minimum, hoping the rolling of the waves would disguise the sounds of their feet in the surf. When he looked behind he could see their tracks were already being obscured by the breaking waves. He silently chewed on the food the Doc had given him, taking it slow and easy. Neither he nor the Chief had eaten in over 24 hours and he didn't need some sort of gut rot on top of it. The food tasted unfamiliar. The cheese was good – creamy, and the bread tasted weird, some sort of grain he wasn't familiar with.

He could tell by the way the Doc was jumping about that he was expecting pursuit. He could see him anxiously eyeing the sun as it moved lower over the sky. Thankfully they were on the Eastern side of this island, which would put them in shade soon and then darkness as the sun dropped below the Western sky. That at least gave them some small advantage. At least following this beach meant they weren't going to get lost in the dark.

They were completely exposed to the air though, and that really bothered him. If a Cylon Raider came over they'd be sitting targets. Where the hell were they, anyway? Kobol? That was the obvious choice, that somehow the FTL on the Raptor had malfunctioned and they had ended up here. He'd gone over their getaway from Galactica in his head several times and realized that there was a good five minutes when he'd actually left Faraday and Desmond alone in the Raptor. He'd been so focused on Chief Tyrol phoning through to CIC without giving them away that he had stupidly left the two prisoners alone inside the Raptor right next to the ECO station. Another rookie mistake. Well, they'd paid for that one. Faraday had clearly messed with the jump drive – no wonder he'd been so confident that getting them to jump back to Galactica would take them where he wanted them to be. Right here. He must have rigged it to jump them here when jumped for home. So this had to be Kobol; the Raptor's FTL had a limited range, and Kobol the only planet near enough. But then, where had Desmond and Faraday gone? The Chief had said they'd just disappeared. One second there, the next, _gone_. His father had been right. The Cylons _did_ have some new technology that allowed them to just disappear - and he'd wanted to get to Starbuck so badly that he'd fallen for the scam. But then he'd seen the signal from the Emergency Beacon – Boomer's plane was here. Faraday had been right about that.

Apollo shook his head, trying to clear it. He couldn't afford to think about all this now. Disappearing inside his own mind to try and figure it all out wasn't going to get them through the next few hours. He had to stay focused and alert and concentrate on finding Boomer's Raptor. They were still headed South, and while that was the case he was prepared to assume that the Doc was friendly. He didn't like the fact that the Doc was the only one with a gun, and it would a simple matter to get that rifle off of him, but jumping him from behind didn't seem such a smart move at the moment. Apart from the noise the struggle would probably generate, the Doc _had_ got them out of there, and who he was and why he was helping them were questions that would have to wait. For the moment their best chance of getting away was to work together, which meant staying sharp, keeping moving and following the Doc's lead. For now.


	33. Taxi to the Curb

Chapter 33

Taxi to the Curb

London 1997

The traffic wasn't moving at all.

Of course she _could_ have gotten the tube – after all, it was a direct route from Knightsbridge to Finsbury Park on the Piccadilly line - but Eloise Hawking didn't take the tube. She paid for the privilege of sitting _alone_ in a taxi in a traffic jam in the middle of central London.

She sighed in irritation, tamping down her impatience as she stared out of the window at the gray wall of color in front of her, watching the buildings as they slid by at something a little less than walking pace. At least it meant she didn't have to do anything, see anyone, speak to anyone – except of course the sodding driver who kept glancing at her through the rear view mirror. What was he finding so interesting? There was nothing - nothing on the outside anyway - to show who she really was and what she was playing with.

Well, who she was _now_ was nobody – nobody but some old cow sitting in a taxi stuck in traffic. Charles would appreciate the irony. From queen bee to insignificant, nameless insect. That's the way he would frame it. Because those things mattered to him. Power was the only thing that he saw these days.

Charles had been his usual acerbic self during lunch, grumbling about losing any of his precious time, but still willing to give it to her; the usual push/pull. They always met up when she was in London. After all these years. Not that she really cared about him; any romantic feelings had long since died. Now she simply enjoyed their shared history – that feeling of familiarity, of having someone else reaffirm that the past had really happened, that she _had_ existed all that time ago. With him. Not that they talked about any of it, but it was still there, ingrained in them both. The Island was a part of him as much as it was of her, and they didn't have to vocalize that fact to make it any more real. And of course she had to keep an eye on him. That man needed to be watched. For Daniel's sake, if nothing else.

She held onto the side of the taxi as the driver took an unexpected left turn down a side street. She sighed. Another attempt at a short cut. She wanted to snap at him, tell him that there weren't any shortcuts. _Ever_. That they always had to take the full route to wherever it was they were going. You couldn't cheat the map. She held on tight as they raced down some rat-run, noting the driver's determined expression in the mirror as he drove too fast around the tight bends. She was going to be late. She checked her watch. It was past five o'clock. She was late already, and the rush hour traffic wasn't helping. Why Penny insisted on living in Finsbury Park was beyond her. It was so common – she could have at least chosen somewhere a little more _You_, like St John's Wood or even somewhere near her old flat in Camden Town. But no, Penny insisted on slumming it in some ridiculously yuppie part of North London.

The taxi slowed to a stop as the traffic thickened around them. She gave another exaggerated sigh and then glared back at the driver's face as his eyes flicked over to hers in the mirror. She didn't want to give him the impression that it was the slowness of the journey that was annoying her or he'd start trying more of his ridiculous short cuts, so she gave her best false smile, her eyes still cutting daggers into his as she turned her face away, staring out of the side window and dismissing his presence, letting her mind wander its usual fruitless paths instead, - like some big cat in the Zoo, pacing the same ground over and over until the grass was all worn down. There was nothing new in her thoughts, but she went over it all anyway in case somehow, somewhere she'd missed something – that amorphous _thing_ that would pop out at her and suddenly change everything. _Some hope._

She put her hand protectively over the bag on her lap, checking to see that the book was still there, an automatic reassurance. Just touching the leather seemed to soothe her. She gently brushed her hand over the cover, tracing her fingers gently around the blood stain in the corner. _His_ blood. The only thing she had left of him, apart from her memories and countless nightmares that still haunted her sleep. This book looked so insignificant, but it held so much. Its very existence was like a tiny thread connecting her past and her future, a tiny fulcrum between her hope and despair. Where would it lead her? That tiny thread arcing into her future - would it go right back to the past or somewhere new – a new future where Daniel lived and she could finally slough off the guilt and shame for killing him? She closed her eyes as _that_ memory started replaying again. And again, like some stuck record round and round, the same old scene. The gun. Daniel. Richard Alpert's face. The blood. The book. The baby.

It had been a long time before she could acknowledge that the baby growing inside her and the man she'd killed were in the fact the same person. Who wants to know that? Who wants to see that?

At first it hadn't seemed real, but as the baby had grown inside her, the knowledge of what would happen to him – of what _she_ would do to him – had begun to haunt her. Soon every joyful thought had been prefaced with guilt and fear. Perhaps that was what had prompted her to leave the Island. She wasn't sure, but whatever it was, Charles hadn't liked it. Of course he'd liked being in sole charge once she was gone, but he hadn't liked her leaving and he hadn't listened when she'd tried to explain why. Then, to prove his point, he'd started having an affair. _Off-Island_, ironically. And with him otherwise occupied she'd brought Daniel up on her own. She hadn't told the boy who his father was, there hadn't seemed much point. Charles had so obviously invented a new life for himself and invested everything in his new family, making it quite clear that he was leaving the past behind him. _His way of coping_, she'd thought on her more charitable days. After all, he'd been there too. Heard it, seen it. He _knew_. He was the only other person who did. Apart from Richard Alpert of course. But then Richard had been there so long, seen so much, that he probably knew everything about everything anyway. Not much went past _him_.

By the time Charles finally left the island he had already finagled himself into a large corporation where the money was good enough to support both families - the guilt talking again, she realized at the time. And once he was out in the real world her expectation that he might actually bother to see his son didn't materialize. She met up with him a couple of times and it was civil enough. For a while there she had still loved him, though _that_ hadn't lasted long. She had no real interest in the person he was turning into, in the man he wanted to be. His constant thrusting for power and control was both tedious and distasteful, but as long has he kept the money flowing it was good enough for her. She didn't ask any more of him. Of course he knew what she was doing, or at least what she was trying to do, and he smiled at her in that patronizing way and just said, 'Ellie, what happened, happened. You'd better just accept that and move on.'

But even if she had agreed with him, how could she move on? Move on to _where_? Daniel was a child, she was his mother, he was living with her. She had to see him every day - and every look, every smile, every little victory at home or at school was always laced with the searing pain of knowing how it all ended. No. She couldn't '_move on_.'

Daniel was six when she enrolled at the university. She had thought long and hard about it. It was a tough decision and part of her still wondered whether she hadn't just walked them both straight into the trap.

She must have still had a little bit of the Island in her - a little bit of still wanting to control what she was fighting, to get up close to the enemy and meet it on her own terms. So she studied Physics and followed in her dead son's footsteps. She did well in her degree. She was bright, intelligent, had an aptitude for science that she'd never realized was there. Her tutors were pleased with her, surprised by some of her questions. One or two of the formula she asked them about had them scratching their heads and then rushing to the literature with twittering surprise. They thought she was a genius; her breakthroughs in temporal physics were lauded throughout the academic world. She was fast tracked through post grad research and then given a prime position in one of the most prestigious universities in the US. And even though her research students saw right through her – any attempt to evaluate their work showed the holes in her skill level - she still continued to perpetuate the lie. After all, she had his book, she had all the formulas he'd worked on right there in front of her, over twenty five years early. And she milked it for all it was worth, piggy-backing her success on his work and hoping beyond hope that it might just give them both enough of an edge to change what had happened – or rather what was going to happen. _Technically_ it hadn't happened yet. At least she didn't think it had. Or maybe it had. She remembered it clearly enough, but then, Daniel was still here, still alive. So didn't that meant it _hadn't_ happened yet and it could still change?

Every day she had battered time and space and done whatever she could to make their lives diverge from the events her dead son had described in his journal, and every day she had scanned her past for any changes, any shifts in her memories. She meticulously wrote down everything she could remember so that she could plot any differences that she was unaware of, just in case her memories had changed without her realizing it.

It was a new field of study. Nobody actually knew how time worked, and there were plenty of theories floating about, from parallel universes with multiple copies of individuals to ideas that time and space were fixed and could not be changed or manipulated - what she and Daniel both referred to as the '_whatever happened, happened_' hypothesis. She knew time travel was possible because her son had already done it. What she didn't know was what could be changed and how.

Ironically, as Daniel grew and took his place in the academic world, rightly eclipsing her effortlessly in terms of sheer genius (she was, after all, a sham) he became one of the most vehement supporters of a fixed time/space theory. '_Whatever happened, happened, Ma_,' he would say with a wry grin, not seeing how her heart clenched whenever she heard the words. She never told him why she opposed him so strongly, but it just made him more determined to prove her wrong.

She kept an eye on his work throughout his career. Their meetings were generally sharp, pointed affairs, with him on the defensive and her making needle-eyed comments that she would curse herself for later but always justify with the same refrain - she was doing it for_ him_. She was trying to save him. She was only looking for a way out, and yes, she was hard on him and cold, and distant, and – and then she stopped because then she would start to wonder if Charles had been right, if she should just let it all go, enjoy the time they had and do nothing to change the unchangeable. But Charles hadn't even done that. He'd just disappeared from the boy's life altogether and not invested himself at all. At least she was there. And how could a mother who loved her son not try? She'd do anything, _be_ anything to save him. Even be the sort of mother he didn't particularly like. It was all for him. It was a true mother's love. Selfless. For him.

She was the one who had given him the journal. She'd seen it in a book shop two days before his graduation. The sight of it had made her freeze in horror, proof that things were working out the same, that nothing was changing, and, yes, _whatever happened, happened._ There it was, sitting so smugly on the shelf, leering at her. She must have stood staring at it blankly for at least five minutes. She thought about destroying the damn thing, but after contemplating it for a while, holding it in her hands, feeling the dark leather shockingly familiar (and new) she decided to buy it anyway, telling herself that she could use it as some sort of control in this vast experiment she'd fabricated around him. Yes, it was a control, a point of comparison – she would be able to compare the two books, the one she'd taken from his dead body and the one she was giving him now. She could line them both up, side by side, old and new, and track any changes. When she wrote the inscription in the front she did so with all the feeling she had left in her heart, and the fervent hope that a younger version of herself would never have to read it.

His journal was mostly physics, but there were also little personal notes, people he met, things that affected him. When she snubbed his girlfriends and tried to steer him away from them he thought she was being bloody-minded. But she wasn't. She _knew_. She had his book and when she compared them they were chillingly similar. Not identical, but similar – similar enough to really frighten her, but different enough to keep her working for more change.

It had gotten worse as time had worn on, as he'd grown from a boy into the man she remembered meeting on the Island, the face of the grown man that she remembered. She would torture herself with it, twist the memory around like someone teasing a piece of hair or wool round their finger and pulling it tighter and tighter until the finger went white from lack of blood. She had thought the pain of it would ease over time but instead it simply intensified as Daniel grew into _him_ and she could no longer make any distinction between them. There was no buffer any more. They were now too alike. The stranger she had killed and her dear son had morphed into the same person. The agony was exquisite.

Daniel had been so stubborn, like his father, and still young enough to have some silly idealist notion of his work being pure and following the divine light to some sort of ethereal truth. So where she had thought there would be two minds working on this – well, three, if you counted the voice of his future self in the journal, now there were only two, hers and one from his battered journal that she, frankly, didn't understand. The one that still had a tiny blood stain in the corner. His blood. She'd left it there as a reminder, a point of focus, and over all the years the stain had stubbornly hung on.

She'd memorized practically every page of that journal. She'd had to. She was the first to admit (in private of course, and only to herself) that most of it was still beyond her understanding. It was only when Daniel's comprehension grew to the point where he could actually explain her own formulas to her that she came anywhere near to understanding them. Well, of course they weren't _her_ formulas, they were his, but seeing as he hadn't come up with them yet the only viable explanation for their existence was that she'd created them. She realized her son was increasingly baffled by her sudden streaks of genius when most of the time she could barely keep up. He accepted it, but she knew that it wouldn't be long before she was unmasked. And then what would she tell him?

She had often contemplated telling him everything, showing him the old blood stained journal and asking him to explain the parts she didn't understand (which, frankly, was most of it), but when it came down to it she couldn't. She couldn't tell him any of it because she knew that then she'd have to explain how she'd gotten the book, what had happened and her part in it. How she'd killed him. And that way he'd never forget and nor could she. She was counting on the past being wiped out, of it never happening, of him being free of any awareness of it. She didn't want him to know. So she didn't tell him. She muddled through. Completely out of her depth and floundering. All too soon she was fast running out of formulas that she could plausibly put out there, and she was acutely aware of the fact that she was struggling to maintain the charade.

Once he'd obtained his doctorate and taken up his post in Oxford, all movement seemed to grind to a halt. Although she'd made sure that most of the formulas in his journal had already been published and widely disseminated throughout the academic world, the so called 'cutting edge research' hadn't moved much further beyond that; it was almost as if they were crawling through some dense fog that was slowing everything down. She shouldn't have been surprised. After all, if she'd wanted proof of the universe self-correcting, the painfully slow pace of this lack of academic breakthroughs would have given her ample evidence. What was worse was that even Daniel seemed content with the level of theoretical progress that had been made (by him, actually, but he didn't know that) and instead of pushing forward he had let himself be sidetracked and started devising ridiculous experiments to send consciousness through time.

She knew it was a waste of his time and his energies, but she was unable to do anything but stand on the sidelines and tell him repeatedly that it was a red herring. Watching rats scuttle through mazes wasn't going to save his life. She had tried repeatedly to talk him into something more fruitful, getting increasingly frustrated at his insistence that he would work on what _he_ wanted regardless of what she thought was important. His little rebellion was pathetic and misguided, and almost strained their relationship to the point of breaking.

But then, at the point where she was getting desperate enough to contemplate showing the book and telling some version of the truth, he had developed a new piece of equipment. She wasn't sure where it had come from, what had prompted him to build it, but suddenly he had developed some sort of device that could plot changes in space time. The device, he had told her, was still fairly crude, but was designed to pick up fluctuations in space time that could potentially cut across the fold of the current reality, possibly giving a snapshot into other realms, other worlds, other realities. The formulas he proudly showed her as he unveiled the machine were the ones she recognized clearly from the illusive 'Desmond pages' in the old journal. These pages had contained formulas that were so far beyond her comprehension that she hadn't risked exposing them to the outside world. She'd never shown them to Daniel either – it would have been too obvious that she had no idea what they meant, but still, she had memorized them and spent a long time staring at the two pages that talked about the '_Desmond Incident'._

From what she could understand from Daniel's journal, at some point in 2004 there had been a huge release of EM energy on the Island - whatever those fools in the Dharma Initiative had been doing had finally backfired big time. From Daniel's journal, it looked as if this fellow Desmond had done something to blow the whole thing apart. The amount of energy released from the Island in that one single incident was Earth shatteringly huge. As soon as she 'd actually understood what Daniel was describing in his journal, she had began to wonder about the possibility of somehow nudging that stream of energy into the folds of space-time so that it could produce a cascade of effects that could knock time off it's smug little pedestal and change the course of Daniel's future, and her past. She hadn't really expected there to be a way to make it happen, but when Daniel unveiled his machine her mind had started running with possibilities.

At last, something she could _do_ that might make a difference.

Had she been wrong to give him the time stamp and the coordinates to the Desmond incident? She wasn't sure. It was done now.

Another thing she couldn't change.


	34. Dreamscape

Chapter 34

Dreamscape

Desmond knew he hadn't closed his eyes or lost consciousness. At most he'd blinked. Or winced. But when the one that Apollo/Lee had referred to as the 'Chief' had finished his countdown and called out 'JUMP', something about his anxious tone had made his own body tense up in expectation. Even so, whether he'd actually blinked or not, the change had been instantaneous. He still had a clear mental snapshot of the insides of the plane, its walls closing in, the muted colors of the military equipment and blinking lights, Faraday sitting next to him and the Chief still holding that gun, leaning over the desk as he worked the controls at the back of the plane. He could still see Apollo in the cockpit pretending to fly the thing. As simulations went, it wasn't all that impressive. It was so exaggerated. Even the countdown to the 'jump' had been laughably far fetched. But clearly his body believed some of what was going on because he'd blinked all the same, and in that blink everything had changed.

One moment the plane and the next… What?

He was still sitting down, but the aircraft had gone - along with Apollo, the Chief and Daniel Faraday. In one tiny moment he'd been flicked from one reality to another, with only the after-image of the plane still burning into his retina, superimposing itself onto this new place. He blinked again, this time consciously, wondering if everything would change again. It didn't, of course. Nothing here was ever going to be that predictable. He was never going to have that much control.

He turned his head and looked around slowly. This was leagues away from the plane or the prison or even the hatch on the Island. This was something else entirely. Even the air felt different. It was softer, more malleable. He felt his breathing speed up as everything around him slowed right down. He was in a room, a room painted lavender with curtains and windows and sunshine. He stared unbelievingly at the light. It didn't _look_ like the simulated sunshine from the hatch, but even so, he suspected it was fake. Somewhere nearby he could hear the drone of a radio or a television. He blinked again. He was still in the same place. It looked like a bedroom, with a double bed and a carpet and… and a picture of him and Penny on a bedside table. He stared at the thing in fascination. It was his photo – the one he'd lost when he'd abandoned the hatch. Oh, so they'd moved his things, had they? Was this his new home now? Clearly someone had decided that the whole plane fiasco had come to an end.

He reached over and picked up the photo - he and Penny smiled at him through the glass. Whoever it was who brought it here had even framed it. He quietly pulled the photograph out from under the glass and slipped it into the pocket of his sweat pants, replacing the empty frame on the bedside table. He felt an irrational surge of guilt as he felt the hard edges of the photo pushing into the outside of his leg. What would they think if they saw him take the photo? And why wasn't there anyone else here, a guard, or something? They wouldn't just put him here and then leave him. Except, of course, if they were still watching him. Like in the hatch. Locke had said he was being monitored the whole time. He turned around in a slow, careful arc, scanning the walls, taking in the elegant cornice and the single light hanging from the center of the room surrounded by a floral lampshade. He squinted at the furnishings in confusion. They were so far removed from the bleakness of the prison cell or the harsh practicality of the plane simulation or the hatch. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps this was supposed to be different He peered closer at the walls and the ceiling. No hidden cameras that he could see, but these people knew what they were doing. They were watching him alright.

Had they put something in the air? Or the food? They must have drugged him again, some fast acting substance that had made him pass out in the blink of an eye. Or maybe he was hallucinating? What if they'd fed him some mind controlling drug and this was all an illusion? That seemed to make more sense, somehow. He felt too alert to have lost consciousness.

What if he was still in the prison cell and none of this was real at all? He stood up slowly, pinching himself to see what happened. It hurt. His body felt normal enough. It didn't feel like he was on drugs. His head felt surprisingly clear and his limbs all seemed to move in the right way. But then, if this wasn't a hallucination, how had he gotten here?

He sidled up to the window and looked out, resting one hand on the pane as he took in the scene in front of him. He could see blue sky, clouds, sunshine, a row of houses and a road full of cars. At least they'd chosen a nicer fake view this time. He pushed the edges of the curtain aside to peer around the sides of the window. The road fronted the building and then wound around a corner fifty yards away. There were cars parked along it and he could see one or two people walking around. They looked normal. Unconcerned. He briefly wondered what would happen if he opened the window and shouted at them. They were probably guards, with guns hidden inside their clothes. As he looked closer he noticed the cars all had UK number plates. He had to admire their attention to detail.

A sound from behind him made him freeze. Footsteps, a muffled thump. He twisted his head towards the noise, fully expecting to see some armed guard, for the scene in front of him to fall away and morph back into the prison cell or that aircraft simulation. But it wasn't any of those things. He squinted in surprise, his breath hitching. In front him was a woman, the door framing her body, a large wooden object held above her head, her eyes wide with surprise. She paused when she saw him, holding the thing in mid air, evidently ready to hit him with it. His eyes tracked her raised hand. He recognized the thing she was carrying - it was the bookend he'd given Penny for her birthd-'

'Desmond? Desmond, is it you?' His eyes flicked to the woman and he froze, mesmerized, just staring at her as she slowly lowered her arm.

'Des?' She took a hesitant step forwards. 'Des, is that you?'

He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

'What are you doing here?'

'Penny?' his voice was no more than a whisper. This couldn't be real. It had to be some sort of apparition. He trawled around wildly for some way of explaining what she was doing here – was this a projected image? Or something he'd dragged out of his own muddled brain? It had to be a hallucination. This wasn't real. _She_ wasn't real.

He watched in horror as the woman squinted to get a better look at him, 'Desmond? Oh my god you look awful!'

He didn't move, hardly daring to breathe. He braced himself, tightening his fists into balls as his sense of reality began to spin out of control. He had to hold it together. He had to stay calm, let it all wash over him. He felt his breathing spike as the panic overwhelmed him. The thought that they had somehow wormed their way into his mind was terrifying. But even if they had, this was just more of the same. More mind games. Even if this was all a hallucination, eventually the drug would wear off. There was no need for panic. He couldn't afford to lose it now.

'Desmond, what are you doing in here?' her voice had a hard edge to it now. He searched her face for something, anything that would explain what he should say, how he should respond. He fought down the panic as he let his eyes weave over the room, taking in the bed, the clothes draped neatly over the chair, _her_ clothes. It all seemed so real.

'Desmond? _Look_ at me.'

He pulled his eyes back to her face, a sick feeling settling in the pit of his stomach.

'What are you doing in my bedroom – did you break in?' her voice was rising now. She was still carrying the wooden bookend. He remembered giving it to her for her birthday. It was when they'd first got together and he'd been feeling inadequate because of all her money and he'd tried to buy her something posh. It was a brute of an ugly thing and he was quite sure that she didn't like it. Still, it was heavy and would do a lot damage if she hit him over the head with it. He watched her knuckles whitening on the brown wood.

'What do you want Desmond?'

He stared at her face, not knowing what to say. She wasn't real. This was something his drugged mind had conjured up. What was he supposed to do, talk to this thing? Have a conversation? All of this was probably being filmed by _them_. What would they find out about him? What would they see about his mind? What inner secrets would he give away if he started interacting with this illusion? If this was all a hallucination, then they wouldn't see Penny, would they? They wouldn't know what he was seeing. If he just looked indifferent they'd have no idea.

Even so, it was still Penny. It looked like her, sounded like her. He drank in the sight of her, keeping his eyes fixed on hers, taking in the apparition. She seemed so real.

But then, it wasn't real, and he was being set up. And if they wanted him to act out this little fantasy, well, he didn't think so. He wasn't going to play. He gave his head a minute shake to let them know that he was on to them.

Then he took in her expression and swallowed hard. It did look just like her. Achingly like her. It all seemed so real.

'Oh for god's sake, Des, _stop_ it. Just say something or get out – actually, perhaps you should just leave.' Illusionary Penny was looking upset now. Her eyes were filling with tears and her face was reddening with emotion. It wrenched his heart. Three steps and he'd be there, holding her. He'd imagined holding her for the last three and a half years. And here she was – would she feel solid and real or would his arms just go right through her? Of course she'd feel solid, this was a multi sensory hallucination, complete with taste and smell. He could smell toast at the moment and still hear the sounds of a radio coming from somewhere.

Penny's breathing had changed now. He recognized the new sound. She was trying not to cry. He felt his own heart aching. He didn't want to hurt her – not even a hallucinated version of her. But this wasn't real. This was a fantasy, a drug induced fantasy. He wasn't really here and Penny wasn't really standing there glaring at him with tears filling her eyes. His heart did a flip as he looked at her. She was just like he'd remembered; maybe her hair was a little shorter, but not by much. His eyes roved her face, taking in every detail. Of course she would have changed in real life. He hadn't seen her in over three years. This was an earlier version of her - he even remembered the sweater she was wearing…

'Get out of my house, Desmond.' Her voice broke when she said his name. Then she strode up to him and grabbed him by the arm. The smell of her assailed him, almost like a punch in the gut, her scent a mixture of her perfume and just _her_. He wanted to bury his nose in her hair and drink it in. He could feel his resolve weakening.

'Oh Penny.' He whispered quietly, causing her to freeze when he she heard his voice. She let go of his arm as if she'd been stung and took a step back.

'Des, what are you doing? What's going on? You smell awful. You don't look like you've washed in weeks. What the hell is going on? Are you in trouble?' Her face was a mixture of concern, hurt and a myriad of emotions that he couldn't begin to name. He could feel his carefully primped walls beginning to crumble to dust.

'You're not real,' he reminded her.

'What?' she squinted at him, her face raw with incredulity.

She took another step back, searching his face now for something. 'Desmond, what's happened to you?' she whispered the words, a note of fear in her voice now.

He looked down at his feet, blocking out the sight of her. He could feel himself unraveling; could feel himself descending into some spiral of madness. There was no way out of this, this insanity was in his own mind, in his own head. There was no escaping this vision. Of all the hells they could have conjured up, of all the ways they could have tortured him, this was the worst. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing it to stop, willing this scene to fade. If there was anything they could have concocted to push him over the edge, this was it. They'd found his weakness, his haven, the one thing that had kept him sane. _Penny_. And now they were slowly using her to pick apart his mind.

So far he'd dealt with their mind games by choosing not to engage in them, by pretending that he was just an observer, but looking into her eyes now, even knowing that this wasn't real, he still wasn't sure if he could feign that much indifference.

Maybe he should just go to her, enjoy the little bubble of heaven that his subconscious mind had created for him, revel in the clarity of a scene that his waking, un-drugged conscious mind couldn't manufacture. He'd been upset when he hadn't been able to remember how she looked, when he hadn't been able to remember her face or her voice – and now here she was, crystal clear. He could drown in the sight of her, touch her, hold her. So what if they saw him? So what if they found out how much he cared for her? So what if they found his weakness? They'd kill him eventually; perhaps he should just enjoy this, lose himself in this Penny while she was so vibrant and felt so real.

He had just made his decision to give in to her and immerse himself in this hallucination when there was a loud crash from somewhere outside the room. He watched as her head flipped round. Another crash. It sounded like it was coming from downstairs, the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. She winced at the sound.

'Look, you've got to go.' She glared briefly at him and then glanced back anxiously towards the stairs. Then she took a deep breath and faced him fully. 'In case you hadn't noticed Desmond, we split up. I'm trying to make a clean break. I'd like you to leave now.' He stood stock still, not really sure how to respond. 'You can let yourself out.'

He could see the tears welling up in her eyes as she quickly turned and hurried out of the room. He stood for a moment, debating what to do. There was no way that he was leaving. He'd vowed never to leave her again – and that included drug-induced visions of her. Maybe he could still be the silent observer, maybe he could just watch this waking dream until the drug they'd given him wore off. He followed her slowly down the stairs, pausing behind her at the door to the kitchen. Penny was standing with her hand on her mouth. Over her shoulder he could see a mess of broken plates and crockery.

'Oh god, there's food everywhere. Daniel? Daniel!'

She gave Desmond a furious glare as she pushed past him and headed down the hallway and into another room. He followed silently behind, a quiet witness in this dreamscape he'd created. Penny had gone into the sitting room where a low, late afternoon sun was pushing through the window. The room was nicely decorated – very _Penny_ - rich leather sofas and expensive paintings on the walls. In the center of the room was a large wing back chair set in front of a TV, and sitting in the chair was Daniel Faraday staring at the screen with a plate of burnt toast on his lap.

'Daniel? Daniel?' Penny was bending over him, speaking slowly and carefully. Desmond watched, mesmerized. Yes, this was turning the surreal color of a dream now.

'Daniel, you need to ask me before you cook anything, do you understand?'

There was a pause before Faraday's unmistakable voice replied, 'I'm eating toast,'

'Yes, and next time you need to ask me and I will help you cook the toast. Do you understand, Daniel?'

'The butter congealed. It didn't work.'

'Look, Daniel, we've talked about this, and you need to ask me before you use the kitchen.'

Faraday didn't answer. Desmond saw his jaw tighten as he stared at the screen in front of him. Penny sighed and got up, ignoring Desmond as she made her way back to the kitchen. 'I'm going to have to get a lock for the kitchen door,' she muttered as she squeezed past him through the doorway.


	35. Penny

Chapter 35

Penny

'If you're not going to leave, then you can help me clear up this mess.' Penny strode ahead of him into the kitchen, flinging the words at him over her shoulder. He could tell by her tone that she was still angry with him. Angry, but softening. At least she'd stopped asking him to leave. His subconscious was making progress. He hesitated in the doorway to the kitchen, wondering how this would look to an outside observer, how this would look to _them._ He hesitated a moment, watching her trying to tackle the mess alone, then he sighed in defeat and knelt down next to her, starting to help pick up the pieces of broken crockery. For a moment they were both silent. He could feel her eyes on him as he bent down, gathering the largest shards into a pile. She cleared her throat as if she were about to say something, but surprised him with a sudden hiss of pain. He looked up to see her gingerly pulling a small sliver of broken china out of her hand.

'You're bleeding.' He said flatly, watching as a few red spots started seeping out of the cut.

'_Damn_.' She stood up and ran the tap, putting her hand under the flow of water and wincing in pain when it hit the cut. He scrambled to his feet, watching her face with concern. Whether she was illusionary or not, he couldn't just… or maybe he could. He sighed and took a step back.

'Second drawer on the right,' she said crisply, angling the cut under the water. He looked up at her in confusion. 'The plasters, Des, second drawer on the right.' She motioned with her chin to a set of built in cabinets, eyeing him carefully as he pulled open the drawer and found the packet of plasters. Silently, he opened it and, squinting over at her wound, chose one of the larger ones, ripping open the wrapper as he held it towards her.

'You'll need to dry that first,' he said, gesturing towards the hand she was holding under the still running water. He grabbed a kitchen towel and wadded it up before he passed it over to her. She gave him a half smile of thanks and held it over the wound, pulling it off to examine the cut every few seconds. 'And you'll need to wait until it stops bleeding…'

'Yes. It's OK, Des. I know.'

He bit his lip and looked away.

'So what _are_ you doing here?' She was studying him carefully now, assessing him. He cringed a little, suddenly feeling self conscious, with his unwashed hair, scraggy beard and clothes that didn't fit him. And she was right, he did smell. It was uncomfortable, being examined by his own dream creation. He didn't answer, but took a deep breath and stared down at the floor, choosing to be distracted by the mess instead. She'd have done better sweeping this lot up rather than trying to use her hands.

'Broom?' he asked quietly.

'In the cupboard.' She nodded towards the corner of the room.

He ignored her as he pulled out the broom and start sweeping the floor. To any outside observer he must look really stupid, pretending to sweep this floor and so caught up in the madness that was inside his own head that he couldn't see or hear or feel anything else. He wondered where he really was. Was he in bed somewhere? Was he lying down? Or was he back in that prison cell? The cell, probably. They'd get more out of all this if he was wandering around holding an imaginary broom and sweeping an imaginary floor. He remembered Laura and the way she had crawled over her bed looking for spiders. Yes, he was just like that now. But even so, the imaginary broom felt solid in his hands, and the crockery on the floor made all the right noises. Though one thing about Laura – she'd still recognized the Commander and Apollo. The people in the prison had still been interacting with her. For some reason that thought bothered him. He wanted it to be just him and his imaginary Penny. But of course, there was Daniel Faraday, eating his toast in the sitting room – or the other cell.

He swept the broken bits of china into a neat pile in a corner and smiled when Penny leaned over with a dustpan and brush and scooped it all into the rubbish bin. She never wrapped it in newspaper. He'd told her that before. It was a thing they had. She'd said he was too finicky, that a little chaos was healthy. He'd told her that the plastic bin bag would split and then she'd have to pick it all up from her floor when she took it out for the bin men, and he was quite sure she didn't want that sort of chaos all over her clean floors. He caught her watching him, a smile almost playing over her lips as she noticed him restraining himself. He almost said something, but then bit back the words. He wasn't going to tell this dream self what to do. He even regretted being so petty with Penny when he'd had her, when they'd actually lived together in real life – when he'd _had_ a real life, not this surreal dreamscape with Daniel Faraday in the next room and Penny… well, with Penny so close it was driving him insane not to be closer.

'So what happened to the army, Des?' her tone was matter-of-fact, but he could hear the tension in her voice. 'I mean the hair, the beard; it's not exactly army issue, is it? I thought you'd signed up for at least two years.'

_The army?_ She thought he was still in the army. That would make sense. She looked younger. He wondered why he'd chosen to hallucinate _this_ time with her, when he'd still been in the army. Probably because if he could pinpoint a time when he'd made the biggest mistake it would be leaving what they'd had to join up. Looking back, that was what he regretted most. _That_ was the point where he'd turn back time and do it all differently. He would never have gone in the first place. It had been a stupid, stupid mistake. He straightened up, moving over to put the broom back in the cupboard.

'So what happened, Des? Did you leave? Or did you never even go?'

He frowned up at her. He was trying to keep this all low key, to ride this out until the drug faded, but her direct questions were bothering him.

'Or were you just too much of a coward to dump me properly? You wanted out and you didn't have the guts to tell me to my face, was that it, Des?'

He stood staring at her in shock. He really didn't like the way this was going. OK, so she wasn't real, and this conversation wasn't real, but…

'So what are you doing here? If you don't want _me_, and I must say, you made that pretty clear, then what is it you _do_ want?' She paused a moment, running her eyes critically over his clothes and his hair, her sweeping gaze taking in his disheveled appearance. He cringed again, feeling the same self-conscious discomfort as he had earlier. A shadow crossed her face and she paled. 'Is it money, Desmond? Is that why you're here? Have you come for money, because…'

_Money?_ His eyes whipped up to hers. She thought he was here for her money? 'NO!' the word flew out of his mouth before he could silence it, louder and with more weight behind it than he'd intended. She took a step back, meeting the counter top in surprise.

My god, he was making such a mess of this. OK, so it wasn't real, but it felt real and here he was terrifying Penny. _His_ Penny. He ran his hand anxiously through his hair. 'Look, I'm sorry,' he said quietly. Then he paused. 'I never wanted your money.'

She straightened. 'I know.' Her words were simple, direct. He had to remind himself that this wasn't real, that she wasn't real, that she was just a creation of his subconscious, an extension of him. This Penny hallucination was just another facet of his mind. This was him talking to himself. She was simply the embodiment of his own hopes and fears. It wasn't real. He swallowed hard.

Even if it wasn't real, it was certainly uncomfortable. How long before the drug wore off?

'So are you going to tell me what's really going on?'

He searched her face for something, _anything_. Her expression was unreadable. Maybe this was his chance to atone. He'd probably never see the real Penny again, so perhaps this was the only opportunity he'd ever get to tell her all those things he'd longed to say. So what if they heard him?

'What did you mean when you said that I wasn't real?'

'_Huh_?'

'In the bedroom, you said I wasn't real.'

Suddenly he felt sick. In a way he had underestimated this situation, underestimated _her_, because now his illusionary Penny was calling him out on the fact that she wasn't real. Right on cue. In a way she _was_ real, she was a real part of him. Not that he was in the habit of talking to the different aspects of himself - his instinct was still to keep quiet, to keep all this to himself, to try and reunite the parts of him that were splitting away into these different characters and unite them through his silence. He wondered vaguely what aspect of his psyche Daniel Faraday was playing. Toast and TV, what did that represent?

'I never should have left you.' He said suddenly. 'I was wrong. It was stupid and cowardly, and I should have stayed. But at the time, I wasn't ready. I didn't think I deserved you. I joined the army because…'

'So you _did_ join the army?'

He nodded. 'I wanted to feel worthy of you.'

'I don't see how joining the army would-'

'Your father, it was something he said that-'

'My father? You joined the army because of my father?' her voice was rising now.

'I was fighting for _you_, Penny. I had to get him to admit that I was good enough.'

'Listen Desmond, my father is a cruel and arrogant man. Which is why I have nothing to do with him. Please don't tell me you left me because of him.'

And of course she was right. It was stupid. He didn't really understand it himself, but something about Charles Widmore's words had bitten into him so deeply that he hadn't been able to let them go. But he knew it was more than that. He'd had plenty of time to think about it. Three lonely years in the hatch. 'I wasn't ready for it,' he finally admitted quietly. 'For _us_. I wasn't ready for _us_. I'm sorry.' He watched her face contort into a pain that made his heart stutter.

'I'm so sorry.' He whispered again.

She took a deep breath and looked down at the counter top, running lazy figures around it with her fingers. Finally she looked up at him. 'Will you ever be ready?'

His breath hitched and his mouth went dry. 'I'm ready now.'

'Now? So is that why you're here, you want us to get back together?'

'More than anything in the world.'

'So you _have_ left the army?'

'Penny, I left the army over four years ago.'

'What?' her face crumpled up in confusion.

'But I know that this isn't real – that you're not real. I wish I could say all this to you in real life.'

'Des, now you're scaring me.'

'I'm sorry.' He took a deep breath and let the words out on a long slow exhale. 'I'm sorry for what I did, really sorry, and if there was anything I could do to take it all back, I would. I'll never leave you again. Ever. I'm yours if you want me. I love you Penny, I always have and I always will. I just hope that some day I'll find you again and we can really be together.'

'Des, are you on drugs?'

He nodded. 'Yes.'

She let out a long sigh.

'It's not what you think, though. _They_ drugged me. I know that none of this is real. And once the drug wears off, you'll be gone.'

'Who drugged you? Des, are you in some kind of trouble?'

He took in a deep breath. What should he say now? He knew they could hear him, that he was talking to _them_ whenever he opened his mouth an spoke out loud. So, yes, maybe he'd say it all. 'They're evil, Penny, they take people and experiment on their minds. And for some reason I'm one of their guinea pigs. They're listening to whatever I say. And even though I know you're not real, that you're just another part of my mind, I still, I-'

'Desmond, I assure you, I'm very real. Look, if you're in some sort of trouble you need to tell me. You say someone drugged you - do you know who? I can call the police and-'

Desmond laughed. _The police_? That would be funny, he'd have a whole cops and robbers thing going on in this strange virtual reality. But of course any police that illusionary Penny would call would be just like her – illusionary. And it would just take away from his time with her.

'I don't think any police that I conjure up in my mind could do anything in this situation.' He smiled at her indulgently. Dream or not, it felt so _good _to be with her again. Suddenly he didn't care if she was real or illusionary, whatever this was, was good enough. Real enough. She was here, talking to him and he was going to lap up every single second of it.

There was a sound from behind him and he jumped as the kitchen door bumped into his back as he stood by the counter. He took a step forward and frowned when Daniel Faraday's head poked through the gap in the door, followed by a hand holding an empty plate with crumbs and some jam smeared over it. 'More toast?' Faraday asked hopefully, pushing himself further into the kitchen.

Penny held out her hand to take the plate. 'Thanks, Daniel, you go back into the sitting room and I'll bring it to you, OK?'

Faraday nodded, then paused, squinting up at Desmond. 'Have we met?'

Desmond gave him a blank look, refusing to engage him in conversation. He wanted Penny to himself, not Daniel Faraday. He'd have plenty of Faraday's bizarre attempts at conversation once this drug wore off and all he could see were the two of them stuck in that prison cell.

'You were there with the Chief and Apollo.' Faraday said suddenly. 'Do you know what happened to my book? I lost it. I'm sure I made some notes…'

Penny smiled sadly and turned to Desmond. 'This is Daniel, my brother. Daniel, meet Desmond.' Faraday was eyeing Desmond curiously.

'We've already met.' Faraday said confidently. 'He was on the plane. When we jumped,' he added.

Penny shot Desmond an apologetic look. 'Daniel has… _issues_ with his memory,' she murmured quietly.

Faraday was staring at the counter top, his eyes glazing. 'Fred Astaire and Ginger. They dance. With toast. I think I'm here for something. I'm here because… '

'You wanted some toast, Daniel. Here, you go back in the sitting room I'll bring it in.'

Faraday nodded and then cocked his head to one side. 'Who is he? Have we met before?'

'It's OK, Daniel, you just go and sit down.'

Faraday nodded, giving Desmond a piercing glance before he shuffled back to the sitting room. OK, so in this dream Daniel Faraday was a little unhinged. Of course he was.

'I'm sorry about that – Daniel, well, he was a genius, and then something happened and…' she let her words trail off. 'They don't know what's wrong with him, it's like his brain is scrambled or something.'

'He's your brother?' Desmond couldn't help the question.

'Apparently.'

Desmond frowned and shook his head. He knew for a fact that Penny didn't have a brother. He wondered vaguely why his subconscious had chosen to pair them up this way in this hallucination.

'Do you want some toast?' She pulled a packet of bread out of the bread bin and switched on the toaster at the wall. It all looked so familiar, so heart wrenchingly _Penny_. He could get used to being in this drug-induced surreal reality. He could hide in here forever. Suddenly he didn't want the drug to fade, he wanted to curl up in this alternate world and pull it around himself like a little cocoon. He'd happily live out the rest of his life here, with her.

'Toast would be great, thanks.'

She gave him a little half smile that melted his heart even more. She put the toast in and pushed down the lever then turned to him, 'OK, look, I need to know what's going on, because if you're on drugs then I don't think I can-' there was knock on the door. She glanced at her watch. 'Oh god, that'll be Daniel's mother.'

'His mother?'

'She left him here while she did some shopping in town. They visit when she's in the UK.'

He nodded as if that should mean something and then waited, carefully watching the toast as Penny slid past him towards the kitchen door. 'She won't be long.' She stopped at the threshold, 'She'll just collect Daniel and then we can talk, OK?'

He nodded again and then stood guard over the toaster as he heard the sounds of the front door being opened and Penny greeting someone. Footsteps in the hallway and then Penny standing at the kitchen door. A smaller, older woman in a tight fitting tweed skirt was standing next to her.

'Desmond this is Eloise Hawking, Daniel's mother. Eloise, this is Desmond Hume.'

'_Hume_?' The older woman stiffened. '_Desmond Hume?_' She eyed him critically and then gave something between a laugh and a derisory snort. 'Of course. I wondered when you'd show up.'


	36. A Blast from the Past

Chapter 36

A Blast from the Past

Eloise sighed. This wasn't what she had been expecting. This wasn't what she had wanted – it was what she'd been dreading, actually. _Desmond Hume_.

History was repeating itself.

According to Daniel's first journal, Desmond had appeared to Daniel in 1996, turning up suddenly in his room in Oxford. From what she had been able to gather from Daniel's scribbled notes, Desmond's consciousness had traveled through time – his 2004 mind occupying his 1996 body. Or something like that. Daniel's notes were never all that clear; he was far more interested in formulae. But the basics were there, and Desmond's little mental jaunt into the past had been what had inspired Daniel to carry out the experiments that had led to him losing his mind that time around.

Things were different now, of course. For a start it was 1997, and according to the older journal, Daniel's mind had buckled _after_ Desmond came on the scene, whereas now, _now_ Daniel had lost his mental faculties _before_ Desmond had arrived.

Different details, even though the grand sweep of the canvas looked as if it was still the same. She'd hoped it would be different – more earth shatteringly different than these tiny, irrelevant changes.

She stood in Penny's kitchen doorway completely unable to hide her disappointment, staring at the man in front of her as the rage rose up in her throat. For some inexplicable reason she had thought it would be different this time. But here he was. Desmond Hume. She eyed him dubiously. He looked ragged, unwashed. Like some rat who had crawled out of a sewer.

A time rat.

She already despised the man. For what he represented if nothing else. Charles didn't like him. She could see why. He was shifty and his eyes didn't meet hers. Spineless.

'How long have you been here, Desmond?' she asked curtly, breaking the silence.

'Um, do you two know each other?' Penny was looking between them, confusion written all over her face.

Eloise's eyes snapped up. 'Do you?' she asked Penny.

'Of course, Desmond's my – well, he _was_ my boyfriend. We… broke up.' She finished lamely.

Eloise stood there in shock. Desmond Hume knew Penny? This was the 'boyfriend' that Charles had complained about? Charles, being Charles, had simply referred to him as _that man_, she was quite sure that he had never mentioned Desmond Hume by name – if he had, she was sure she would have remembered. But even so, how had she not known? Though she had to confess she'd never paid much attention to Charles' rants. She'd long ago learned to switch off and think of green fields instead, but now, suddenly, she wished she'd been a little more on the ball.

And then there was Penny. Had Penny never mentioned him either? She wracked her brain for all the conversations she'd had with Penny since they'd met. Desmond Hume was her _boyfriend_? How on earth had that escaped her before now? The fact that she'd only known Penny a couple of months probably had something to do with it, and yes, the fact that she didn't exactly like her hadn't helped. Or, at least, she hadn't warmed to her. _Like_ was too strong a word. Their link had been through Daniel, and she had purposefully kept their conversations perfunctory. She wasn't interested in making friends. She'd only introduced them for Daniel's sake because, in his journals, Daniel seemed to give no indication that even knew he had a half sister and introducing him to Penny had been another one of her flailing attempts to do things differently. She hadn't told Charles about it. He'd be furious if he knew, but seeing as he and Penny weren't on speaking terms, she'd felt it was worth the risk.

And here, now, standing in her kitchen was a disheveled looking man that Penny claimed was Desmond Hume. Eloise sighed heavily. This was all getting so complicated. And of course, the series of bizarre coincidences that had brought them all together here suggested, what? That there was some pattern beneath all this? Was this set of relationships really random or could there be a deeper order that she should know about? Not for the first time, she missed Daniel's sharp mind. She'd come to rely on him too much.

From Daniel's first journal it was clear that Desmond's consciousness had traveled through time to 1996, and that Desmond had then had to travel to Oxford to see Daniel from wherever his 1996 self had been at the time. So only his mind and not his body had been on the move. The whole-body time travel had come later, once Daniel had reached the Island. She eyed Desmond carefully. He looked a wreck. She'd seen a photograph of him in Penny's sitting room, and this didn't look like the same man. The man in the photograph had looked dapper and well-dressed. This one looked ragged and wild, sort of a little unhinged. Which wasn't surprising, she admitted reluctantly, given the circumstances. Even so, she suspected that more than his mind had been traveling through the folds of space-time. At least she hoped so.

'How long have you been here?' she repeated her earlier question, trying to make eye contact with him, the irritation blooming inside her when he made no move to either look at her or answer. She didn't know how much time they had. And why was he here, now? He'd clearly been drawn to Daniel somehow, but why?

Suddenly she felt herself go cold as she realized the implications.

What this meant was that, on a sub-atomic level, Desmond had to be drawn to her son. In piggybacking onto the EM wave that Desmond had released on the Island, Daniel must have dislodged himself in space-time, and when Daniel had gone along for the ride, he must have somehow merged his energy signature with Desmond's. Who knew what would happen if Desmond started bouncing around space-time again? Would he drag Daniel with him? In his present state, Daniel was far too vulnerable to be going anywhere. Whatever she did now would have to be quick. She had to get Daniel away from Desmond, fast. But she needed information. She needed to know what had happened to Daniel. Maybe she should take Daniel away and come back – but then she wasn't sure how long Desmond would even be here. He was clearly unstable. On all levels. One look at him confirmed _that_, she thought wryly.

She stood for a moment, pondering what to do. Of course the safety of her son was of paramount importance – it didn't take much to see that Desmond was either bouncing around through space-time because his whole matrix was unstable or, well… or he was here because whatever happened, happened and this was just history repeating itself. With a twist. And it was the twist that she had to concentrate on.

'We need to talk,' she said finally, moving past them into the kitchen and putting her bag down on the table in the dining area. Ridiculous design, Penny's kitchen was a small slither of work surface that opened out onto a dining area. So _twee_. It had a view of the garden, the late sun shining on the first of the spring leaves. She stifled her disgust as she pulled the curtain shut, cutting out the slanting light. Then she pulled up a chair and sat down at the table.

'Would you like some tea?' Penny was already fiddling with the kettle.

'No. Sit, Penny. This won't take long.'

Penny looked confused, then annoyed, then schooled her features and came to sit down opposite her. Eloise gave a grunt of approval. She was her father's daughter alright. Desmond was hovering by the kitchen sink, watching her warily. 'Sit down Desmond.' He hesitated, then slunk down onto a chair where he could watch both her and Penny without having to move his head.

'How long has he been here?' Eloise directed the question at Penny, deciding the simple information would be gleaned more quickly from her rather than the sour and uncooperative-looking Desmond.

'About half an hour,' offered Penny. 'I found him in my bedroom about half an hour ago. Listen, what's going on, is he in trouble?'

She huffed. Of courses he was in trouble. Deep trouble. 'Where's Daniel?' she asked suddenly. Penny pointed vaguely in the direction of the sitting room where the sounds of the television were sifting down the hallway. She nodded before reaching into her bag and pulling out a notebook. She jotted down a few things – the date, time, her observations of Desmond's appearance and manner. She dotted the last full stop, digging the pen a little too hard into the page.

'So. Desmond. Where were you, before you came here?' There was no point beating around the bush. They didn't have time.

He watched her steadily.

'Were you with him? With Daniel?' she pushed out his name. Desmond didn't react. 'Oh for god's sake, Desmond, can't you bloody well cooperate?' There was a flicker in his eyes before he looked over at Penny and then back at her. His face remained irritatingly impassive.

'Is there something here that I should know?' Penny's voice was hesitant.

She ignored Penny and continued talking to Desmond. 'Look Desmond, I need to know what happened – I need to know what happened to my son. Now, I'd like you to answer my question, yes or no – were you with Daniel?' the blank stare was really beginning to upset her.

'Desmond?' Penny was looking over at him uncertainly.

Eloise let out another exasperated sigh. 'Has he said anything to you?' she asked Penny.

Penny looked over at Desmond and swallowed hard.

'Penny, this is important.' She paused. 'Look, Daniel's life is at stake and I'm quite sure that Desmond Hume's is as well. And I am quite certain that he knows something that can help both of them, so if he has said anything to you since he got here I think we would all appreciate it if you would enlighten us with it.'

Penny gave her a wide eyed stare as she received this piece of information, and then took a deep breath. 'Um, he said I wasn't real – that he'd been drugged and that… and that they were watching him.'

'Oh for god's sake.' Eloise almost spat with ridicule, speaking directly to Desmond. 'Don't tell me you've got some conspiracy theory going on. Do you honestly think you're that important Desmond? Do you? Look -' she shook her head. Desmond hadn't reacted to anything either of them were saying, but sat there with his eyes glazed staring at the wall. Clearly she was going to have to do this the hard way. She turned back to Penny. 'Penny. Desmond doesn't belong here. He's from the year 2004.'

'What?' It wasn't so much that Penny didn't believe it, but that the statement seemed so ridiculous that it had just flown over her head.

'Desmond is from 2004.' She repeated more slowly, hoping that Penny's tiny brain would catch up. 'He was on the Island.' She added, hoping beyond hope that _that_ would mean something to her.

'The Island?' Penny's expression of dumb confusion was enough to make her want to scream. Damn Charles for his ridiculous compartmentalism. _Men_.

'I suppose your father never talked to you about the Island, did he?'

'My father? What's this got to do with my f-'

Eloise put up a hand to cut her off. She hadn't expected to have to do this. She didn't want to do this – apart from anything else, there wasn't time. Giving Penny the run down on her family history definitely hadn't been part of the plan.

'Look, your father and I lived on an Island. Daniel was conceived there. For some reason Desmond ended up there. And you did something, didn't you Desmond? Something that released such a surge of Electromagnetic Energy that it was enough to catapult you right through the fabric of space and time.'

Desmond's eyes were growing wider now.

'And no, you haven't been drugged, and no one is watching you.'

'Wait, wait a moment – are you seriously saying Desmond's from the future?'

'Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. Saturday 27th November 2004 to be exact.'

'And you know this because….'

'Because Daniel wrote it all down in his diary.' There was a pause while she read Penny's expression. Doubt. Incredulity. Disbelief. 'Alright. So, Desmond, what were you doing in 1997?' She looked over at Desmond. 'Well?'

Desmond didn't say anything. 'Oh for god's sake, speak man! What were you doing in 1997?'

'He was in the army.' Penny said quietly, looking over at Desmond. His face was still expressionless except for his eyes roaming every which way. She hoped she was finally getting through to him, though by the gormless expression on his face she doubted it.

'Good. Where?'

'Millar barracks. It's North of Glasgow.' Penny was still looking at Desmond.

'Right. We're finally getting somewhere. So, Penny. Phone them.'

'What?'

'Phone the barracks. Speak to him.'

Penny looked from her to Desmond and back again.

'Get on the phone.' She said again, more slowly, 'And speak to Desmond at the barracks.'

Penny's eyes grew wider. 'But Desmond's here,' she insisted.

'Exactly.'

'Um.' Penny stood up carefully and inched towards the kitchen. At least the girl was still moving. _Slowly_. Desmond however, was looking positively catatonic.

'Did she ever phone you?'

Desmond looked up at her, surprised.

'Penny, did she ever phone you when you were in the army?'

He stared at her.

'Look Desmond, I know you might find this hard to believe, but I am actually trying to help, so if you value your life and your sanity I suggest that you at least make an effort to cooperate. Now this is important, do you have any memory at all of Penny ever phoning you at Millar Barracks?'

Desmond gave her more of that ridiculous blank stare, then flicked his eyes back over to Penny. Finally he shook his head slowly. She let out a long, slow breath. At least the man was following the conversation, even if she hadn't got a damn word out of him yet. That was progress anyway.

Penny was standing by the phone, flicking through an address book. 'So you never phoned him but you still have the number in your address book?' _How sweet_. Her thoughts were laced with sickly sarcasm. She really didn't like this Desmond fellow. She could _really_ see why Charles wasn't impressed. She waited quietly as Penny dialed the number and started talking, then turned her attention back to Desmond, listening to Penny's voice as she watched Desmond's face. If she was right, the new memory should form about… now.

'Yes, Desmond Hume. Private Desmond Hume. Thank you. Yes, it's important. Penelope Widmore. It's alright. I'll hold.'

Eloise kept her eyes on Desmond and he stared back at her impassively.

'Desmond? Is that you? Des? Yes. Um, how are you?' Penny was holding the phone and turning to watch Desmond sitting at the table with a horrified stare.

Desmond frowned, then his eyes opened wide with surprise.

'Alright, _enough_.' Eloise said to Penny. 'Come back here. We need to talk.'

'Look Des, no, nothing important I just… look, I have to go.' Penny slammed the phone back on its cradle and blanched white.


	37. Tea Party

Chapter 37

Tea Party

Penny steadied herself on the kitchen counter as she moved to take a shaky seat back down at the table.

'I take it that was him?' Eloise hoped to god the girl was going to hold it together. They had a lot to get through.

'Yes. It was him.'

'And now you remember it, don't you, Desmond?'

Desmond was staring at her wide eyed. She could see the fear in him now. She studied his face in fascination. _Incredible_. She hadn't been certain how it would work, how the memory would actually change. And here, now, she'd witnessed it happening. She felt elation and hope surging up inside her as she leant forward eagerly. 'So Desmond, what do you remember now? Do you still remember the fact that Penny never phoned you? Do you have both memories… or has the new memory superseded the old one?'

Desmond just stared at her. He looked as if he was about to throw up.

'Well?' her impatience was turning into a strong impulse to pick the frustrating man up by his throat and shake him. _Hard_. 'Desmond, do you still remember when Penny didn't phone you?'

He was still staring at her, his expression completely unreadable. Finally she heard his whispered voice, 'It was a dream.' She wasn't even sure if she'd heard him correctly, his voice was so faint and his eyes had taken on a distant, unfocussed look, his gaze drifting off to the window and the dying sunlight through the curtain.

She heard Penny's breath hitch. 'I don't understand… ' she began, then stopped and took another breath. 'How can there be two… '

'How can there be two of them?' she finished the question for her. 'Because there are now two Desmonds in this time-frame; the one at Millar Barracks and this one, sitting in front of us. The Desmond we have here is from 2004. That's right, isn't it Desmond?' Desmond dragged his eyes away from the curtain-covered window. They were hollow and empty. _Desmond has just left the building_, she thought ruefully.

'So he hasn't been drugged?' She could see Penny scrabbling to understand. Desmond's eyes flicked over towards her.

'No. Though I can see why he might think that. There is a certain logic there. But no, Desmond, I hope you can see now that you haven't been drugged, and as bizarre as it looks, you are traveling through time and space and you have been since you turned that failsafe key in the Dharma Station.'

Desmond looked up at her slowly.

'Look Desmond, believe it or not, I am trying to help you. Whatever you did in that Dharma Station released enough EM energy to blast you across half the galaxy. And now you are displaced in space _and_ time. So. You can either indulge in your conspiracy theories about who did this to you or wake up and try and at least help yourself get out of this mess. Understand?'

Desmond shifted uncomfortably and then cleared his throat. 'The Dharma Station,' he said quietly, 'It was being watched. They were watching us.'

_Of all the things to bring up, he starts on this?_ 'Of course it was being watched. The Dharma Initiative was obsessed with watching everyone, including themselves. But by the time you were on the Island the Dharma Initiative were no longer there. All of the equipment you saw was obsolete.'

'Hang on, who are the Dharma Initiative? What are you talking about?' Penny's voice cut across the conversation. Eloise sighed. Was it worth going into all of this. One look at Desmond and the fact that he seemed genuinely interested in the question convinced her that yes, it probably was.

'The Dharma Initiative were a bunch of hippies who thought they could work outside the laws of physics. They set up a little camp on the Island in the early 1970's and played god for a while. And Desmond spent three years there, stuck inside a Dharma station managing the EM energy for them. Until something happened and he blew the whole thing to smithereens. That's right, isn't it Desmond?'

Desmond was still staring at her hard, but now she could see the guilt and fear in his eyes.

'I had no choice,' he whispered, 'The computer was smashed. I had to use the failsafe key.'

Finally, finally she was getting through to him. She almost breathed a sigh of relief. 'The failsafe key? What exactly did you _do_, Desmond?'

'There was a failsafe under the main room. I just turned the key.'

'And then what? What happened then, Desmond?'

He stared at her and shook his head.

She felt like wringing the man's neck in exasperation.

'Wait… you say Desmond was managing the energy? How?' _Oh god_. _Would Penny just keep up?_ Still, Desmond had ground to a halt again so she may as well get Penny up to speed.

'The Dharma Initiative royally screwed up,' Eloise explained, 'The Island has certain… properties. It turns out that, among other things, it holds a huge reservoir of Electromagnetic Radiation. Some of the clowns from Dharma Initiative drilled into a pocket of the EM energy and then the idiots had to find a way to make it safe.'

'And where does Desmond fit in? I don't understand.' She could see Penny beginning to panic.

'Desmond had to manually release the charge build up.'

'So… what?'

'So I pressed a button every one hundred and eight minutes for three years.' He said softly.

'On your own?'

Desmond swallowed hard. 'No. Kelvin was there, for most of it. We were waiting for a replacement. We…'

Penny held her hands up, stopping Desmond mid sentence. 'Wait, back a bit - how did you get on this Island? I mean, there was the army, and…'

Desmond looked down at the table. 'After I left the army, I went on a round the world race and I was shipwrecked. Kelvin found me and I stayed with him.'

There was silence for a moment. Eloise could see Penny counting up the years. Seven years. Plenty of time for lots of little Desmond adventures.

'And Kelvin? Is he…? ' Penny was looking around as if Kelvin was hiding in some cupboard somewhere.

'He died. It was an accident.' Desmond's expression twisted. Eloise pushed down the choking laugh. Yes. _An accident_. The guilt was written all over him. Still, that was none of her business.

She pulled the conversation back on track. 'So even after the Dharma Initiative left the Island, they still had a lot of equipment lying about. Obsolete equipment.'

Eloise paused. She'd often wondered herself what happened to the Dharma Initiative. She knew most of them had been killed – gassed – but she'd left the Island by then and had never quite worked out who was responsible for releasing the gas. Of course it had been either Benjamin Linus or Charles. Or both. Not that it mattered now. Or maybe it did. She suspected that both Charles _and_ Benjamin Linus had had a hand in it. Richard Alpert was probably the only one who really knew. And Richard - being Richard - wouldn't be breathing a word. And typical of Charles, he wouldn't have bothered to look into what the Dharma Initiative had left behind – two people stuck in one of the old Dharma Stations making sure the Island stayed safe.

'It was a ridiculous system.' She added, thinking aloud. 'Manually releasing the energy. They should have automated it, but the Dharma Initiative never liked to do anything the easy way, and they probably thought it was an opportunity to study the behaviour of people stuck in a small room endlessly pressing a button.' She had Desmond's full attention now. _At last._ 'So, in answer to your question, Desmond, those observation stations weren't in use when you were there. No one was watching you. I don't think anyone even knew you were there. Charles certainly didn't.'

'Charles… my father?' Penny's forehead scrunched in annoyance.

'Yes, he was in charge for a while. Until Benjamin Linus took over and threw him out.'

She could see she had both their attentions now. Penny was chewing her lip and looking thoughtfully down at the table and Desmond, well, Desmond was looking like some drunken fool who had just been doused with a bucket of cold water.

Penny stood up suddenly. 'I don't know about you, but I really need a cup of tea.'

Eloise sighed and then gave a curt nod.

'Des?' Penny looked at him expectantly. He gave her a thin smile as she headed to the kitchen area. 'I think I've got some chocolate biscuits here somewhere.'

The tea seemed to cocoon the conversation in an air of almost-normality. Desmond sat hunched over his cup, quietly dunking his biscuit into his tea, with Penny squeezed into the seat next to him. She'd moved over to be closer to him. It would have been sweet if it hadn't been so nauseating. And Desmond hadn't been such a drip. She concentrated on her tea and let the silence engulf them all. She blew on it hesitantly, taking a few small, scalding sips. The silence was almost companionable. When she looked up again she was surprised to see that suddenly she had a receptive audience. The wonders of a cup of tea – and almost an hour of hard work trying to prise their minds open. This was probably as cozy as it was going to get, and her best chance of getting Desmond to tell her what she really needed to know.

She bent down, pushing one hand into her bag and pulling out the two precious journals, placing them carefully face down beside the notepad she was working on.

'Do you recognize _this_, Desmond?' she picked up the black book and held it in front of him – Daniel's original journal. Desmond's expression was blank. 'Or this?' then she lifted up the stack of paper she'd found on Daniel after he'd collapsed in his office. The papers with '_Battlestar Gallactica Raptor navigational log' _printed across the top of each page. She held them up in front of him. His eyes opened with surprise before he carefully schooled his face again.

'Right, so you know what this one is. But you haven't seen the black book before?'

'Eloise, what is this all about? What have these got to do with Desmond?'

She took a deep breath.

_This was it_.

She placed one hand over the old leather book in front of her, closed her eyes for a fraction of a second and when she opened them she started speaking. 'When I was… younger… I lived on the Island with your father. One day a strange man came into the camp waving a gun around. He asked to see me, but because he was threatening one of my people, I shot him in the back. As he lay there dying he told me he was my son.'

Penny gave a gasp, her hand over her mouth.

'Yes,' she said, her voice quavering in spite of her attempts to hold it steady. 'It was Daniel. It turned out that he had traveled back in time to speak to me.'

There was a long silence. Penny was just sitting there, her hand covering half her face. 'It was Daniel?' she half whispered.

Eloise nodded.

'I don't understand how that's possible.'

'No.' she agreed grimly, 'Nor do I. But he was there, just like Desmond is in front of us now.'

There was another long pause, then Penny's face creased in a frown. 'Why…? '

She snapped her head up. 'Why? Why did I shoot him or why was he there?'

Penny winced. 'Well, both, actually.' Penny was eyeing her with something bordering on distaste. 'You say he was looking for you. I just wondered why.'

'He wanted to change a possible future.'

'But…'

'He came back in time because he wanted to stop someone from dying. A girl he was in love with.' She watched as Penny shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

Penny swallowed hard. 'And this was, when? '

'1977.' She could see Penny was scrabbling desperately for her bearings. She had to admit, though, she was impressed. She was Charles' daughter alright. She had that steel in her.

Penny's mouth formed a small 'O'. Desmond hadn't said anything to these latest revelations, but she noticed that his eyes were brighter and he was watching her closely.

Eloise looked down at the book in front of her, for once not wanting to make eye contact. 'When Daniel… died on the Island, he had this with him.' She gently put her hand on the battered leather book. 'It documented his life – his working life anyway. When I read it, I realized that Daniel had come from the future – from 2004. And that the child I was carrying at the time was the same person.' She steeled herself as the familiar scene played out in her mind, his last words coming to her loud and clear. '_You knew, you always knew, you knew this was going to happen and you sent me here anyway.'_ Of course his words weren't lost on her. She understood what they meant, that somehow she had done all this before. It wasn't exactly comforting. Or maybe it was. Maybe she and Daniel were in some endless cycle, a time loop of him coming back to the Island, of her shooting him dead, of them having another chance to change it, and then another and another until she succeeded. Or perhaps that wasn't how it worked. Perhaps this was it, the last and only time. Well, she would change it. From his words, she knew he hadn't stumbled on the Island by accident –that wasn't what he had said to her. He had specifically said that she'd _sent_ him back. She shuddered. Well, at least that was something she _could_ avoid this time round.

The sound of a tea spoon clinking on a saucer brought her out of her thoughts. She looked up to see both sets of eyes on her. She had their full attention now and suddenly she wished she hadn't. This wasn't comfortable. She hadn't told anyone before now. Of course Charles knew, but that was different. He'd been there, on the Island, and apart from the occasional snide comment, they never really talked about it. And God knew he had enough on his conscience. But the two people sitting in front of him, staring into the fiber of her shame, this was different. She didn't like it one little bit.

She took a deep breath and sat up straighter in the chair. 'I'm not proud of what I did. Not a day goes by that I don't regret it and wish that I had... But – it was dangerous back then, and he was wild and – I had _responsibilities_ – and…' her justifications dried in her mouth as she looked at their blank faces. The room was quiet. Neither one of her audience moved. 'I wish I'd done it differently.' She said quietly, 'and I have to live with that. But I have spent every day since then trying to make sure it doesn't happen again, making sure that it never happens in the first place.'

The silence stretched out until Penny's voice cut through the quiet. 'You want to change the past?'

'No.' she looked up to see Penny's eyes on her. 'I want to change the future. It hasn't happened yet. It's 1997 now. Daniel didn't return to the Island until 2004.'

'I'm sorry, I…'

'When you phoned Desmond at the barracks he said he had no memory of you ever phoning him there. And now he remembers. You changed his past – but of course it wasn't the past for you or for Desmond.'

Penny shook her head in confusion.

'I don't think anyone really understands it – but Daniel did something that changed Desmond's future, and I've no idea what happened to either of them.' She looked pointedly across at Desmond, still silent.

Penny's head snapped up. 'Daniel did something? Wait… what? '

She sighed. 'Daniel mentions Desmond in his earlier journal – the journal I found on him after he died.' She picked up the book and flicked through it. 'There are pages and pages where he's trying to find a way to change the future. He has a lot of theories and a lot of different ideas, but here,' she turned to the page, '_Here_ he talks about Desmond Hume – he must have met Desmond on the Island and-'

'Des?' Penny was looking over at Desmond.

Eloise watched as Desmond shook his head. 'I never met him before… Well. I never met him on the Island.'

Eloise sat back in her chair. _Was that good or bad_? She had no idea. 'Well, you haven't met him yet. Who knows?… but from what I've seen, the universe has a rather unpleasant tendency to self-correct. Just because you haven't met him on the Island yet, doesn't mean you won't.'

'I'm not going back there.' Desmond said firmly.

She gave a sharp laugh, 'My dear boy, you may not have a choice.'

'You think that because it's written in there, it's going to happen?' Penny pointed over at the battered book.

'If I believed that, I wouldn't be sitting here now. But according to Daniel's diary, it has already happened. And yes, it is also our un-chartered future. I think Daniel was right when he observed that it would take a significant event to force history out of its groove, but he obviously thought that what happened when Desmond released that EM wave was big enough to do that. At some point Daniel met Desmond and found out about the EM wave. And here,' she pointed to the page in the journal, 'he has some rough workings that show exactly how to redirect its trajectory.'

'And that would change the future?'

'He certainly thought so.'

Penny thought for a moment. 'And did he use it when he came back in 1977?'

Eloise had to admit that she was sharp. Considering the situation, her questions were incredibly perceptive. She shook her head. 'No. He didn't have the equipment. He pursued another theory instead.'

'Which was?'

'Well, that doesn't matter now. It didn't work.' She wasn't going to drag this conversation out by describing their ridiculous attempts to detonate that hydrogen bomb. 'In that time frame, he died,' she added. 'For nothing.'

'So this time round, he's trying again?' Penny's tone was questioning, almost disbelieving, but with enough sincerity to avoid being rude.

'No. _I'm_ trying again. Daniel doesn't know.'

Penny looked even more confused.

'I never told him. He doesn't know. He doesn't know about this,' she held up the battered book, 'or what happened to him when traveled back in time. He didn't even know that time travel was possible.'

'Why didn't you tell him?'

'If you were a mother, would you want to tell your son that you'd shot him in the back, in cold blood?'

'Well,' she swallowed uncomfortably, 'when you put it like that, no, I suppose not.'

'Besides, I didn't think he needed to know. If I could change the past – the future – then it never happened. I found the reference to Desmond in his journal, and when he produced this machine that he said could pick up EM energy through the folds of space-time, I copied down the numbers and gave them to him. That was six months ago. The next day I went back and found him unconscious on the floor of his lab. And he had this with him.' She held up the sheaf of loose papers. 'When he woke up his mind had gone.'

'And this was six months ago – when Daniel… well, when he first got confused?'

'That's right.'

'And do you know what happened?'

'No. Of course it was obvious that he was conducting some sort of experiment using the numbers I'd given him, but I don't know what he did. Or what happened to him or Desmond. And until I know more, I can't help either of them. I can only assume from _this_,' she held up the pile of loose papers, 'that Daniel somehow ended up with Desmond somewhere.' she isolated the last page and held it up. 'He wrote this,' She read out loud, ''_In a Raptor; Apollo got us out of the cells in Galactica. I was right- it is a space craft. Desmond is here and a man they call the Chief.'_ Then two pages of numbers.' She looked up. 'Does this make any sense to you Desmond?'

Desmond frowned, but stayed silent.

'Please.' _Yes, she was begging now_. 'If you know anything about what happened to Daniel, I need to know.'

Desmond's eyes were boring into her. He sat totally still, just watching her. Then he cleared his throat. 'The Raptor was a kind of jump jet,' he said uncertainly. 'Apollo was the pilot – that was his call sign, his real name was _Lee_ - and _Galactica_ was the ship with the prison. And I still don't believe it was a space craft.'

'And the numbers?' she asked tightly.

'Calculations. He said he was trying to figure out the coordinates to get us back.' Desmond now looked completely unhinged. But at least he was finally giving her the answers she wanted.

'Back to where?'

'To the Island.'

'Of course.' She breathed out a sigh. She recognized some of the formula from the first few pages – Daniel was clearly trying to put down everything he remembered from his journal, but the final pages, the newer calculations, she'd had no idea what they were referring to.

'And what happened to his journal? It looked exactly like this one.' She held up the battered old book with the blood stain in the corner.

Desmond shook his head. 'He was asking about a book. Apollo said there wasn't time to get it.'

_Damn. _ That would have had the information about the experiment he would have conducted that night in Oxford.

There was silence in the room. She sat and absorbed what Desmond had just told her. Her mind was in a whirl. She had no idea what to make of it. How could she even begin to think about it? _A spacecraft?_ She'd read that sentence over and over, and just assumed that Daniel had written it after his mind had become confused. But now, here was Desmond, from the future, talking about actually being there with Daniel. On a spaceship.

Penny was chewing on her lip. 'I don't understand.'

'No. I don't think any of us do. But it looks as if Daniel succeeded in doing something that catapulted both of them through space and time.'

There was long pause. 'So… how does he… I mean, what happens to Desmond now?'

'I don't know. But at the moment there are two of him. I suppose somehow he needs to get back to his current reality.'

Another silence. 'And how does that happen?'

'I have no idea.' She sat still for a moment. She could feel the tension building between them. She could see that neither Penny nor Desmond was happy. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. What was she feeling now, _guilt_? Why on earth was she feeling guilty? Desmond had screwed up his own life long before she started messing around with it, but even so, she had to admit that she had no idea what was going to happen to him, and that she was directly responsible for his predicament. She stood up quickly, the chair scraping on the wooden floor.

'I have to go.'

'What?' Penny was up on her feet. 'You can't – I mean, we need to sort this out!'

'I'm sorry. I don't know any more. Look, I need to go away and look into this further. Nothing is going to happen tonight. I'll phone in the morning. Unless there's anything more?' She looked expectantly at Desmond. He hadn't moved, but was sitting with one hand on his tea cup, the other resting idly in his lap. 'Well? Did Daniel tell you anything else?'

Desmond was staring into his tea cup, but this time she could see that he was looking inside himself. Remembering. Then he looked up slowly shook his head. 'No.' he said finally, 'Nothing.'

She saw Penny give him a sharp look, then she shook her head, sighed and rubbed her hands wearily over her eyes. 'OK. So, um, I'll go and get Daniel's things.'

She nodded. 'Goodbye Desmond.'.

He looked up, but didn't acknowledge her.

_Shifty_. She sniffed in disapproval as she swept out of the room.


	38. Time after Time

Chapter 38

Time after Time

Penny closed the front door and took a deep breath, resting her forehead on the cool wood. Without Eloise and Daniel the house was strangely quiet. In a good way. She didn't think she could have taken much more. She turned her head slightly as she strained to hear the small sounds that told her that Hairy Desmond was still sitting in her dining room. And that now she was alone with him.

Clean-Shaven Desmond was, apparently, living in Millar Barracks somewhere north of Glasgow.

And Eloise Hawking was either a liar, or… she cut that one off mid-thought, pulling back from the front door. Enough was enough. She needed another cup of tea before she even went there.

Hairy Desmond was still sitting quietly at her dining room table staring into his empty cup.

'Here, I'll get you a refill.'

His thin smile was disconcerting. Yes, it was the same Desmond, and at the same time it… wasn't. She gently took the cup and saucer from under his hand. They didn't touch. It had been six months since she had last seen him – well the clean-shaven version anyway. She hadn't changed all that much in that time. But he had; she could see it in the way he moved, the slump of his shoulders, the way he held himself. She put the kettle on, the normal, familiar motions of making tea a solid counterpoint to the ridiculous situation they had both found themselves in. She turned her back to him as she fiddled with the tea bags and the kettle, looking around once to make sure he was still there. He was. And he was watching her silently, his shaggy, dirty hair almost covering his eyes. The beard gave him a wild, almost feral look. He really needed to wash.

Was she seriously entertaining the thought that this Desmond had traveled through time to be here? Eloise's stern and dour expression as she had sat there pontificating at the table suddenly struck her as absolutely ridiculous. The woman was clearly out of her mind. Like some fierce headmistress, all tweed skirt and tight lines, with her tights and neat shoes… Penny had a sudden, inexplicable desire to giggle, to laugh and laugh until this whole ridiculous situation floated away down the plughole like the water from the cup she was rinsing. She snorted and held her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking.

Desmond was watching her with a hint of amusement.

'I'm sorry,' she cleared her throat, wiping her eyes, 'this is all just so… silly.' She swept her arm over the kitchen and dining area. She cleared her throat and poured the tea, watching as the steam rose up towards the ceiling. Steam. Ether. Dust. Ashes. She couldn't believe it. Eloise had to be wrong. She sobered up immediately. _Eloise had to be wrong_. She set the teapot and cups carefully on the table and sat down opposite him. Then they both just sat there, all the humor gone, sucked out of the room as the reality of the situation pushed down on her. A heavy silence filled the space between them. It was awkward.

'Do you believe her?' Penny eventually broke the silence.

He looked up, then took a deep breath. 'No.' Another pause, then his voice, still almost too quiet to hear, 'Do you?'

She hesitated, 'No.'

He gave a half laugh and picked up the teapot, smoothly pouring tea for both of them.

'But I did speak to you at the barracks,' she added quickly, 'it _was_ you. Or at least someone who sounded exactly like you.' Could it have been a set-up? Could Eloise have planted someone in Millar Barracks to sound just like Desmond when she phoned? But then Eloise would have had to have planted Desmond in her bedroom as well, and why would she do that? OK, so now it was getting almost as far-fetched as time travel and space ships, which, quite frankly, seemed to have a more plausible motive than Eloise being part of some conspiracy against her.

'I think I preferred it when we thought you were being drugged. I think we should just go with that, Des.'

He let out a sort of breathy laugh before he shook his head.

'Eloise is a genius.' She said almost to herself. 'I looked her up when she first made contact with me. And so was Daniel – a genius - before his mind went. I mean, if you read about their research, they're huge in their field. World famous. And it's all time travel – it's all about whether or not history is fixed. I never thought… well.' She was silent for moment. 'It all seemed so far fetched… '

Desmond was gazing intently into his teacup again. 'I think I'm going completely insane,' he said quietly.

She took in his appearance. He did look insane. The hair. The beard. _God, Des, please get rid of the beard_, the wild eyes. He'd always been so well dressed and now he looked like a prisoner on some dirty protest. But given what Eloise Hawking had just told them… well, sanity seemed kind of irrelevant now, at least the sort of sanity that holds the world in place and makes any sense of it. If the context has spun into crazy, then how can you even judge if you're insane? She had just sat through over an hour of the most insane conversation with Eloise Hawking. The madness certainly wasn't restricted to Desmond's attempts to try and make sense of it.

'No.' She said firmly, 'You're not mad, Desmond. Eloise Hawking is the one who's insane. Look, there must be a reasonable explanation for all of this, I mean…' she gave a little puffy sigh. 'Let's go with the drugs, OK?'

He smiled over at her, a small sad smile.

'Because seriously, if you're on drugs then so am I. Maybe Eloise drugged our tea… Maybe she just gets a rush from messing around with people's heads. Perhaps she's completely bonkers and this is her way of showing it. I mean, you get those doctors who are barmy and go around killing their patients for fun, maybe she's the theoretical physicist's version of that – only she drives everyone insane instead of… oh god maybe _she_ did it to Daniel!'

Desmond was watching her speculatively.

'Or maybe I'm the one on drugs,' she finished lamely.

'Hey.' Desmond stood up and moved around the table towards her. 'I can't believe you're really here.'

She waited, suddenly frozen. This was Desmond standing in front of her. _Her_ Desmond, the one she had lived with and cried over, the one who had felt so close that she hadn't known where she'd ended and he'd begun. They'd been so close… He reached out a small, uncertain hand and gently touched the side of her face. She held her breath. He was here. This was the man who had given her such happiness and then broken her when he'd gone. She should be angry. She _was_ angry. But this Desmond didn't seem like the one who had left her six months ago. He was different. Not so different that he wasn't still achingly familiar, just different enough that she was finding it hard to be angry.

'You broke my heart.' She said flatly, not wanting to lose the reality she'd suffered under for the past six months. 'You joined the army and you broke my heart.'

'I know.' He let his hand drop slowly to his side. 'I'm sorry.'

'Why?' she whispered the words and watched as took a deep, staggered breath.

'I was a fool. A coward. I had… issues.' He spat out the word, like it didn't really fit but he couldn't think of anything else to put in its place. 'But I never stopped loving you – it was always for you, Penny, I… wanted to deserve you.'

She shook her head. _Deserve me?_ Since when had that been an issue? 'I don't understand.' She said quietly.

'No – I'm sorry. I just wasn't… good enough.'

'You were always good enough, Des. Except when you left.'

'I'm sorry. I need you back, Penny. I need to know, I… I love you. I can't live without you, I just…' She saw him swallow uncomfortably. 'I just don't know what's true anymore. I… I can't believe you're really here. You've no idea how long - ' He took another small step towards her, gently tugging her out of her chair and pulling her towards him, wrapping his arms around her. The familiar warmth coursed through her, that feeling of home she'd always felt when she was in his arms. Only now - she pulled back almost immediately, her breath coming faster. This was too much, too soon.

'I'm sorry,' she whispered, 'I'm still- you left Des, you left and you really hurt me, I-' she took a deep breath. 'I'm sorry.'

He took two steps backwards and stood there looking completely defeated.

'Besides, you smell. And I don't think I'm going to let you near me again until you've had a wash.' She could see his tentative smile as he looked down at his feet. 'And those clothes? They need to go. I think I've still got some of your old clothes upstairs…'

'You've got some of my clothes? Here?'

'I couldn't bring myself to throw them out. Look, I've no idea…' she took a deep breath; she could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. This was too much. It was all too much. 'Look, Des, let's just keep it normal, OK? I'll get us something to eat and you – well, I'll get those clothes.'

He followed her up to the bedroom and stood by the door as she rifled through the cupboard. She didn't know what to say. She didn't even know where to begin. Maybe with the elephant in the room.

'So it's true then?' she asked him, then looked up at him, meeting his gaze, 'You're from the future.'

He smiled a half smile and looked away.

'Des? What year is it for you? Really.'

The sigh seemed to come from the very bottom of his feet. '2004.'

'Eloise was right then?'

He didn't answer.

'So what happens now?' she asked.

He gave a half laugh, 'Like that woman said, we don't know,' he hardly disguised the anger lacing his words.

'I had no idea, absolutely no idea what was going on. I didn't even know that you and Daniel, well, that you knew each other.'

'Are you really his brother?'

'Eloise said I was.'

'And you believe her?'

'Well, short of a DNA test.' She bit her lip. Did she really need to know? She hadn't spoken to her father for six months - ever since Desmond had joined the army. She knew her father had had something to do with it; Des hadn't been right since that day he'd gone to see him. She should never have let them meet. She sighed and stood up, reaching over for her bedside phone and tapping in the familiar number. They needed to know, and this was the quickest way.

He answered after two rings. It was his direct line, and he knew only a handful of people had that number.

'Who is this?' his voice was sharp. 'Penny? Is that you?' God, he even recognized her breathing.

She steeled herself and started talking before she gave in to the impulse to slam the phone back down on its cradle. 'Is Daniel Faraday my brother?' She threw the question at him and waited.

She heard the sharp intake of breath, the hesitation, the moment of uncertainty that told her everything she needed to know. Charles Widmore didn't do uncertainty. For the fist time in her life, her father was speechless. Before he could say anything else, before he could deny it and confuse her with his lies and half truths, she pulled the phone away from her ear and replaced it on the cradle. Then she pulled the cable out from the wall. He wasn't going to get hold of her again tonight.

'Right. So now we know that one is true.' The phone started ringing from down in the kitchen. She'd have to go down and pull that one out of the wall as well. 'How about that shower now, Des? You still smell…'

She switched off all the phones and then busied herself with food; pasta, pesto, salad. Simple. Quick. And then Desmond emerged from the shower ten minutes later looking more like the Desmond she knew. The beard and the hair were still there, but in his own clothes, clothes that actually fit him… well, it looked more like him. He'd lost weight and filled out at the same time. She had to remind herself that this man was seven years older than the one she knew. Wait – was she really buying into this?

Neither of them spoke as they sat down to eat. It was a relief, in a way, but there was so much she wanted to know, so much that she couldn't even begin to get her mind around it.

'So. Tell me what happened to you – after you joined the army.'

He looked up from his food, his fork poised mid air. He carefully put the fork down and stared into the distance for a moment. 'I missed you.' He said simply. 'That's what happened.'

She swallowed the lump in her throat. Any resolve she had to stay strong and protect her heart was swiftly crumbling.

'Des, I-' her voice was interrupted by a loud thump coming from upstairs. The sound had come from the bedroom. She stopped speaking and looked over at Desmond. He stood up carefully.

'The bedroom?' he asked quietly.

She nodded.

'Wait here.' She watched him walk warily to the hallway and then heard his footsteps as he climbed the stairs. She followed him, taking the stairs quickly. She stopped at the door to her bedroom and gasped when she saw a man lying on the floor in a heap.

'Oh my god!' He was filthy, dressed in a sweat-stained grimy t-shirt. And if Desmond had smelled bad, this man was in another league entirely. He was positively ripe. Desmond was already kneeling down beside him with an ear to his chest.

Penny stood there frozen, her hand over her mouth. 'Is he alive?' she stuttered.

Desmond sat back on his heels and nodded.

'You know him?' It was a guess, but Desmond seemed too – comfortable sitting there next to him, as if he knew the man lying there wasn't a threat.

'His name is John Locke. He was with me in the hatch - when I used the failsafe key.'

'I thought you said his name was Kelvin?' Why was she arguing about semantics when this man had just _landed_ in her bedroom? She could feel the panic rising again.

'There was a plane crash. John Locke was one of the survivors. They found me in the hatch.'

'So, what, he's unconscious?'

Desmond shrugged. 'I think so.'

'And he's from 2004 as well?'

Desmond nodded.

'Well, what do we do with him?'

'We wait until he wakes up.' Desmond was watching her with concern. He was different, this Desmond. Older, more weary. But there was a depth to him, a maturity that hadn't been there before. The panic was threatening to overwhelm her. She wanted this strange man gone. She wanted it to be just her and Desmond. No more time travel.

'Well, what's he doing here?' She realized as soon as she said it that it was a stupid question, but really, there was a strange man lying on the floor of her bedroom and she didn't like it.

Desmond looked up at her. 'The same as me,' he whispered. Then there was a shimmer, as if the room were floating. She took an instinctive step back and then rushed forward as Desmond and the man on the floor slowly faded into nothing.

'No!' she heard her voice shouting the words, 'Des!'

And the next moment he'd gone, both of them had gone, leaving her staring at the floor where the two men had been, her last memory Desmond's wide eyes looking into hers.


	39. Gossip

Chapter 39

Gossip

'That wine?' Sawyer squinted over at Charlie suspiciously. 'From my stash?'

'Oh c'mon Sawyer, this stuff's like battery acid, it's not like you're missing anything.'

'Well what happened to all the good stuff?'

'We drank it. This is all that's left. But you're welcome to have some. Here, park yourself by the fire and I'll get you glass.' Charlie carefully sloshed some wine into a mug and passed it across to Sawyer. He took it cautiously and sniffed. Charlie, Hurley and Racetrack were all looking at him expectantly, all with matching Dharma mugs in their hands, sitting around the fire, their faces flushed. Looked like it had been quite a session. It was late, everyone else had gone to bed. Maybe these three were watching out in case that plane came back.

'Should you even be having a fire?'

'Maggie said it wouldn't make any difference. Apparently that plane has perfect night vision.'

Sawyer grunted. Starbuck hadn't come over and kicked the fire out so that was probably true. He paused a moment. _Maggie? _'Who the hell is Maggie?'

'Maggie, meet Sawyer.' Charlie gestured over to Racetrack.

'Your name's Maggie?'

Racetrack shrugged, smiled, and sipped at her mug of wine.

This place was getting crazier and crazier. '_Okay._ Well, that's nice. How's Boomer doin'?'

'Sun said her fever had broken. She's asleep.'

'That's good. Hey, she got another name as well?' He sat down heavily in the sand, trying not to spill the wine. It had been a long day.

Charlie gave a half laugh. 'Sharon'.

'Sharon_? _Her name is Sharon?'

'I know. I can't see it either. All the Sharons I've ever met went around in tight skirts, lots of makeup, high heels… I think Boomer suits her better, but Maggie here, yeah, I can see you're a Maggie.'

Another grunt from Sawyer as he took a big gulp of the wine and grimaced. 'No kiddin'. You're right. This stuff _is_ like battery acid.'

'Yeah, this was all that was left. Sorry Dude.' At least Hurley looked guilty. Charlie was smiling like a smug bastard. Sawyer couldn't help but shake his head in amusement himself. The stuff was foul but he could already feel the alcohol warming him, and after trudging round the damn jungle with Sayid and Starbuck for the last five hours he could really do with a drink.

'So when did you get back?'

'Just now.'

'Mission accomplished? You get rid of the Cylon thing?'

'Yeah, Starbuck ditched it up some tree.' He shook his head at the memory – he'd have asked her why she thought a tree was the best place for it, but by then he'd lost the will to live and was too relieved that they'd finally gotten rid of the thing to bother saying anything.

'And are Sayid and Starbuck back as well or did they kill each other and leave you to bury their bodies?' Charlie was grinning like an idiot now. That guy sure knew what buttons to press.

Sawyer nodded over to the kitchen where Starbuck and Sayid were moving around in the shadows. Starbuck was eating something, He could just make out where Sayid was standing off to the side and watching her like a hawk. There were lamps still lit around the kitchen area, and the fire here. It was impressive how everyone at the beach camp managed to live in complete denial of how much danger they were really in.

'I think he fancies her.' Charlie was rubbing his chin thoughtfully. 'Yup, just look over there.'

'Yeah, if wanting to kill someone is-'

'No, look how he's watching her… like he wants to eat her or something.'

Sawyer swiveled right around so that the kitchen was fully in his line of sight. Starbuck was clearly visible under one of the lamps with Sayid over behind her, his eyes boring into her back. And his expression? 'Looks to me like he wants to slit her throat.'

'That's just how he expresses emotion. She looks a bit like Shannon, don't you think?'

'What?' he turned to Charlie and shook his head.

'OK, you need to use your imagination – take away the psycho element and put some skimpy clothes on her.' Charlie raised his eye brows and grinned, 'But apart from that they're pretty much alike. Blonde hair, baby face. If Starbuck did some of the _'Whatever!'_ tossing hair and pouting thing, they'd be the spitting image.'

'Who's Shannon?' Racetrack asked. Sawyer groaned. This was getting out of hand.

'She was, like, Sayid's girl.'

'Oh. Where is she?' Racetrack started looking around the camp.

Hurley shifted uncomfortably. 'She died.'

'Oh. I'm sorry.'

'And she looked like Starbuck. I'm right, aren't I?' Charlie was leaning forward with a mischievous glint in his eye - and now he looked a more closely, Sawyer had to admit that Charlie might be right.

'Yeah. Look, Sayid fancies her! He's bloody undressing her now, you can see it. C'mon Sawyer, use your eyes.'

'Yeah, and you use your head, Sherlock. If you want to start rumors like that about the two most dangerous people in a ten mile radius, then fine, go ahead. Personally, I don't have a death wish, so I'm keeping quiet.'

'Ah. Now, when you put it like that…'

Sawyer shook his head and concentrated on the wine. Charlie was definitely growing on him. He had balls, and Sawyer was learning that not much went past him. Sawyer lay back on his elbows and watched the fire, the flames throwing sparks up into the night. The wine was leaving a mellow warmth and he kicked back and relaxed, letting it soothe him, listening to the easy banter between Charlie and Hurley, Racetrack joining occasionally. Claire must be asleep.

It had been a while since he'd felt like he was having a drink with friends. Well, it had been forever. All that was missing now was Kate. She'd been gone two days and there was still no sign of her. Should she be back by now? The others' camp was at least two days away so there was no point worrying yet. Hell, who was he trying to kid? He was worrying now, kept thinking that maybe he should go after her. He shouldn't have let her go alone. But if he got caught they would kill him for sure this time, and he wasn't getting himself killed on account of Jack. He'd rather she hadn't gone, is all. He sighed and gulped down the rest of his drink, tuning back into the conversation. He didn't want to think about Kate right now.

Charlie was sitting with his guitar on his lap, gently strumming some chords. 'So, Maggie, tell me about your job. Pay good? Hours good?'

She spluttered into her wine, giggling. She looked like she'd had plenty to drink.

'OK, so let me get this straight; Boomer was flying that plane, and you were, what, the co pilot or something?' Sawyer tensed. These were questions he'd tried asking Starbuck but had met a blank wall, and from something Sayid had said he'd gathered that Racetrack had gone all tight lipped on them as well.

'No. I'm the E.C.O.' Charlie scrunched up his face in a confused frown. Racetrack grinned, leaning up on her elbow and taking another sip of wine. 'Electronic Communications officer'

'Oooh, fancy name.'

'It just means I sit in the back and do all the communications stuff, sweeps, jumps, that sort of thing.'

'You use all that complicated-looking equipment I saw on the plane? Hurley, you should have seen that stuff, it was like, well, really techie. Sayid was itching to get his hands on it.'

Racetrack shifted uncomfortably. 'Look, I'm sorry. I can't talk about it.'

'Why not?'

'Military classified.'

'Oh. Because Starbuck told you not to?'

She nodded, looking down into her drink.

'Right. We need to ask some personal questions then.'

She smiled again, looking around nervously.

'It's alright, Starbuck can't hear us – she's set up camp in the jungle and she's already headed off there. What are you doing in the military anyway? I mean you really don't seem like the tough ruthless type to me, I thought all you squaddies had big tattoos and anger issues'

'Boomer hasn't,' put in Hurley. 'She seems really nice.'

'Well, no, I wasn't thinking of Boomer. More like, well, like Starbuck.' He glanced over at the dark of the jungle and whispered her name theatrically.

'Starbuck's OK,' Racetrack said quickly. 'Underneath it all – most of it's just her job. She trains pilots, so she has to be hard. If she went easy on them they'd die.'

'Wow, I guess that makes sense. Must be tough for her.' Hurley gazed into the fire. Sawyer sat quietly, watching the flames making shapes on their faces. So Starbuck trained pilots? He filed away that piece of information. This was getting interesting.

'I suppose that explains the bossiness,' put in Charlie, 'but not the psycho craziness.' He leant forward, speaking more quietly. 'What worries me is that she's in charge – and if she's not all there…' he tapped the side of his head. 'So my question is, if she's in charge of all of you, who is in charge of her?'

Racetrack smiled again. 'Anyone who outranks her, but even then she won't listen. She spends half her time in hack.'

'Hack?'

'The brig.'

'What, like prison?'

'Yeah. One time she punched the XO in the face.'

'XO?'

'Executive Officer. He's the second in command of the ship.'

'Right, so getting a good picture here.'

'She only got away with it because the Cylons attacked and they pulled her ass out of there and got her flying Vipers.'

'The Cylons attacked?'

Racetrack bit her lip. 'I've said too much.' She sighed. Charlie leaned back thoughtfully and took another sip from his mug. Sawyer watched them both carefully. He had to admit, that had been nicely played. There was definitely more to Charlie than he'd considered before, but he could see that Racetrack had clammed up tight now. They weren't getting anything else out of her tonight. He was already about to get up when the first drops began to fall, making the fire hiss and splutter.

'Yeah, well, that's the rain,' Sawyer sighed and stretched. 'Got another day big tomorrow. I'm gonna hit the hay. See y'all in the morning'

00000

'_What do you hear, Starbuck?'_

'_Nothin' but the rain.'_

'_Then grab your gun and bring in the cat.'_

Starbuck opened her eyes slowly. It was dark- so dark that it looked black even with her eyes open. It was raining hard; she could hear it bouncing off the thin waterproof membrane covering her. What was the Old Man thinking now? Was Galactica still even in this sector? She was sure that President Roslin was still waiting for her to get back with the arrow. That woman was nothing if not tenacious. Were they nearby? Now that the Beacon was switched off there was no way of anyone from Galactica locating their position. Unless they'd picked up the Beacon's signal before she switched it off. Maybe they'd been attacked and that was why they couldn't send out a search and rescue. Maybe they never even picked up the signal. I sure looked like the Cylons had jammed everything coming out of Kobol.

Well, with the Beacon switched off they were certainly invisible now. She'd go back to the crashed Raptor in the morning and see if she could at least get a fix on what was jamming them and try and block it. That was if she could get it powered up. She hadn't had a chance to get a good look at it, but the ECO station hadn't looked too damaged. If she could get some power to it maybe they could get a message out to Galactica. Even if the Raptor's power was down, there had to be a couple of power packs in one of the back lockers –though that might be harder to get at with the godsdamn tree in the middle of the plane.

How in hell Boomer had managed to twist that plane around a tree was anyone's guess. Boomer had always been a damn ass flyer. Another one that should never have passed Basic. Like Zak, Boomer just didn't have the chops for flying. And here she was, thinking of Zak again, of their last night together before her life had turned to shit. Most folk on Galactica counted the Cylon attack as the point where their lives were shot to hell, but hers was way out of whack before that. If anything, the Cylon attack had been a welcomed distraction – which sounded like crap, but she didn't mean it that way. It was just that before it not much had been important enough to get her out of her own frakking head, and being in her Viper, knowing that any second a Cylon Raider might be about to get her first - _those_ were the only times when she could think clearly, when Zak went right out of her head and her mind was clear and focused and she wasn't feeling guilty or missing what they'd had so much that she could barely breath.

Yeah, she had screwed up. Big time. But then who hadn't? She'd seen plenty of frak-ups. Plenty of mistakes by rookie pilots – hell, even by Apollo and the Old Man, but they had all gotten away with their frakking mistakes. Shame that hers had ended the best thing that had ever happened to her. But then she was jinxed. Anything that got near her was frakked. Maybe she was being punished; maybe her mama had been right, that she didn't deserve anything and the gods would just crap on anything or anyone she let near her. Not that anyone tried. Except Lee, maybe. But how frakked up was that? He was Zak's brother, for crying out loud.

The rain was coming down harder, slipping through the waterproof covering and dripping onto her pants. Well, so much for sleep. She pulled herself up and crawled out of her tiny hole. Boomer was still in one of the shelters on the beach. It was pitch black and the rain pelting down hard. At least Boomer's shelter would keep out the rain. She carefully pushed through the undergrowth, feeling her way through the edge of the jungle until she finally felt sand under her hands. From there she could see enough to made it over to Boomer's little shelter, crouching down and trying to make out her shape in the darkness. By the sound of her breathing Boomer was still asleep. At least here was someone she could probably save. When she'd had a look in earlier, Boomer had already been looking better, the fever had nearly gone and her face had looked less _angry_ than before. Not that Boomer did angry. She did gentle home furnishings. Why she'd joined the military was beyond her. Well, she got it – Boomer's family had been wiped out and the military had been the next best thing. But Boomer wasn't cut out for being a pilot. Not in war time, anyway. Helo had gotten her through up until now, but Helo was gone. Boomer was like some little girl who had no idea what she'd gotten herself caught up in. Well, Starbuck would have to be badass enough for both of them. She could do that no problem.


	40. Night Vision

Chapter 40

Night Vision

The tiny dugout was stiflingly hot.

'Your daughter made something like this,' Kate had said when they'd first crawled inside, 'When she helped us escape.'

Rousseau didn't say anything to that, just silently handed her a bottle of water.

'So what now?' Kate asked hesitantly. 'I'm not tired, I can keep going.' It was mid afternoon and hot. They'd only been walking for five hours and there were at least three or four hours left before dark

'They keep a perimeter watch, a mile up there.' Rousseau nodded in the direction they'd been walking. 'We wait until dark.'

The dugout was like an oven and she couldn't sleep, at least not at first, but as the hours dragged by exhaustion had finally taken over from the fear and the adrenaline and she'd fallen into a deep, unconscious sleep.

When she finally awoke it was pitch black and Rousseau still showed no sign of moving. Kate pulled her sleep tousled hair away from her eyes, squinting up through the thatch roof of the dugout, trying to figure out how bright the outside world was and if there was any moonlight.

'What are we waiting for?' She whispered into the dark, hoping that Rousseau was still in there with her. She couldn't see a thing.

'The rain.' The voice came, low and deep from the far side of the dugout.

'Rain?'

'Shh. No noise.' Then the sound of movement which Kate assumed was Rousseau lying down or turning over or something. Either way she got the message and lay back down, trying to calm her impatience and irritation at the delay.

She must have dozed again because the next thing she knew Rousseau was shaking her awake. 'It's raining. We go now.' Rousseau's voice was a flat murmur, hardly audible above the sound of the rain.

Kate watched as Rousseau shouldered her rifle and crawled carefully out of the dugout, offering her a hand and hauling her out into the downpour. It was really dark, her only guide Rousseau's hand lightly touching hers, her feet searching for a firm tread as she tried to move as quietly as she could through the dunes at the edge of the beach. Rousseau let go of her once they reached the surf. It was pitch black even here beside the ocean, the rain crashing down and pelting her from above. Rousseau took up position behind her, letting her lead. She had nothing but the feel of the waves to guide her as they nudged against her ankles.

Logically she knew that Rousseau was right, that the Others would find it harder to track them in the rain and almost impossible to see them in this downpour, but she was still annoyed by the delay, by the fact that they'd wasted most of the day lying in that tiny dugout. She could well believe that the Others had listening posts nearby. Rousseau had told her that once they had gotten past that invisible line they could keep going, but first they had to get by without being seen and she had assured her that this was the only way.

Kate had left the survivors' camp a day and a night ago. It seemed like an age now, but she'd headed off just before dark once she'd realized that none of them were interested in rescuing Jack. Sure, Sawyer would probably have gone along with her, but not for the right reasons. Besides, he was needed at the camp, what with the new pilots and that plane and all. So she'd snuck out without saying anything. She hadn't even said goodbye. But she couldn't risk his life again, and a goodbye would have done just that. She had no doubt that Sawyer would have gone with her if she'd asked him, and they both knew that they'd kill him for sure this time.

She'd slept the first night in Rousseau's underground home. It had been dark by the time she'd found her, wandering around her part of the jungle and calling out her name until finally Danielle had emerged, like a ghost, from the undergrowth. And then she'd told her what she wanted, that she wanted to rescue Jack and that she knew that Alex would be there as well. What she didn't say was that they had escaped from the small Island and that she wasn't even sure that Jack and Alex were at the Others' main camp at all.

Had Rousseau been surprised when Kate had told her she'd seen her daughter? After sixteen years, Kate had turned up in the middle of the night and said she'd found her. Kate had expected more of a dramatic reaction. But Rousseau had looked at her curiously, carefully weighing up whether or not she believed her. When she'd given a description of the girl and told her how much they looked alike, Rousseau hadn't lost that quality of measured suspicion. And even though Kate thought she'd finally convinced her, Danielle still hadn't been in any hurry to go anywhere, while Kate had been edgy as hell. She couldn't stop thinking about what might be happening to Jack and hoping that she wouldn't arrive too late. The thought of anything happening to him…

It had been Rousseau's idea to take them along the beach. She said that _they_ always went the quickest way – which was either by boat or across the middle of the Island. This way was slower but safer, and the rain and the waves would hide their trail. Rousseau had been on the Island sixteen years, and so far the Others hadn't captured her. Her carefulness had paid off up to now. Kate could see now that so far every time any of them had headed north on this Island they'd been watched all the way. If this is what they would have had to have done to remain undetected then no wonder they'd gotten themselves captured whenever they'd headed north.

Rousseau had said the rain should last a couple of hours, which should give them time enough to get past the Others' line, and then the dark and the water should cover them enough – provided they were vigilant for any movement on the sea. The Others had boats and liked to use them, but the boats they used at night had motors and it was easy enough to hide.

Kate took a deep breath, bracing herself against the cold. At least they were moving now. She had no idea what she was going to do once they reached the Others' camp. Try to break in somehow, find Jack, get him out. Easy.

00000

She lay in the dark listening to sound of the rain, then the waves and the wind making the covering above her flap around. She wasn't sure how long she had lain there, just knew it had gone from light to dark and that the sounds of the people in the camp had slowly hushed until now the voices were silent. Now it was just her and the wind and the waves. She was dipping in and out of consciousness, awake, asleep, past, present, memories and reality moving over each other until she had no idea who or what she was. She was Sharon Valerii, then she was a number eight, then she was a creature under water, then she was the Chief's, then nothing.

Blackness.

The relief of nothing.

The sickness was claiming her.

She'd allow that, allow it to take all of her, all the pieces of her that were slowly tearing themselves from her essence, from her heart, from her soul. But then, Cylons didn't have souls, did they? Soon the darkness would take her completely and then it wouldn't matter anymore. Who she was or wasn't would be irrelevant. No one would know. Just her. She took another breath in. Then out, feeling the hot aching burn as it coursed through her. Cylons weren't supposed to get sick. But here she was. More human than she could ever have imagined. What would Cavil say about her weakness?

And she felt herself falling. Falling, back down until her head hit the sand and she was lying flat on her back, watching the kaleidoscope of memories flicking through their endless loop. She was too many people. Too much inside her, too much that wouldn't speak and then screamed in her head. She couldn't bear it. She just wanted it to stop. To all stop.

She would let the sickness take her.

It was the only way.

00000

Apollo sat huddled under the overhanging roots of the enormous tree. The space was large enough for all three of them to sit squashed against the damp earth, knees to their chests. He silently watched the rain dripping off the bare wood and splashing onto the softened earth. He had slept for a while, cramped and cold. He'd wanted to stay awake, keep watch, but he'd been so exhausted that he figured he was more likely to get himself killed if he didn't take the chance to rest when he could. Under the circumstances there was no sense in staying up all night on full alert. The Doc had chosen a good spot, the huge roots of the tree hung right over, the sea in front of them, their backs huddled into the damp earth behind them.

They'd been walking for most of the night and had only stopped when the rain had started again. Apollo had lost all sense of time, but it had to be nearly dawn, and once the sun came up they'd be visible again. But the Doc was right to stop. They'd both been keeping a closer eye on Chief Tyrol the last couple of miles and it had become increasingly obvious that the Chief couldn't keep going. He was slumped down next to him, still clutching his left arm like it still hurt or something. Apollo wanted to ask him about it but he hadn't dared speak in case the Cylons picked up the sound of their voices and once the rain had come on and they'd found this place to rest the Chief had passed out so fast he hadn't had a chance to say anything. If he woke up while it was still raining he'd check in on him. He looked like shit.

He laid his head back and tried to sleep again, but his mind was racing now. At least he had a chance to think, to try and figure what in hell was going on, and more importantly how he could get them all safely back to Galactica. First of all he had to find that Raptor. He assumed the emergency beacon was from Boomer's raptor, but what if it was a trap? What if the Cylons had set it up to lure them there?

He didn't know who these people were. He wasn't even sure if the group that had captured them were Cylons or not. He still wasn't certain whether the Doc was just taking them to another rival Cylon group, maybe as trophies. Maybe they still wanted to know Galactica's coordinates. Maybe his father had had the good sense to jump the fleet when he'd realised they'd gone. But something told him Galactica would still be there if he returned even a month from now; his father wasn't going to leave him behind. Laura Roslin was probably the only one strong enough to persuade him to change his mind, but she was so fixated on Kobol and the scriptures that she would insist they waited for Starbuck to return with the arrow. It looked like both Laura and his father were going to be waiting a long time.

He sighed, squinting into the dark, listening to the steady roar of the rain. They wouldn't hear or see if any Cylons did come up on them, not in this, and Centurions had perfect night vision. He wasn't sure about the human-looking models, but it would have been a faulty design on their part if they didn't have perfect visual acuity night and day.

He shifted uncomfortably. The other puzzle, of course, was what the hell had happened to Desmond and Faraday. He realized that his father was probably right, that the Cylons had developed the capacity to somehow transfer themselves from one place to another instantaneously. Not such a surprise – the Leobin model had told them that the human looking Cylons had the ability to download their consciousness to another body, and if they could do that, then maybe this was just the next step. Was it such a surprise that they were downloading bodies as well now? If that was true then they were all completely frakked. They couldn't defend themselves if the Cylons had the capability to beam themselves right inside their he didn't understand was that if the Cylons had that sort of technology, why weren't they using it? The only explanation he could think of was that it was some sort of prototype.

He wished he'd stayed on Galactica, not listened to Faraday's smooth talking. His father and President Roslin had been right. And, truth be told, his heart had spoken louder than his head. He'd chased the dream of finding Starbuck in the same way that she'd gone after that stupid arrow. Maybe they were more alike than he'd thought.

He could feel Chief Tyrol's weight shoved against him. He knew that the Doc was on the far side, the Chief slumped between the two of them. He couldn't see or hear anything except the pounding rain, but he sensed that the Doc was wide awake. Every now and again the Chief moved slightly, a slight vibration that suggested the Doc was shifting his position on the other side of him. The thought of leaping up, overpowering him and taking the gun, flitted through Apollo's mind. Then he rejected that. Apart from alerting every Centurion in a five mile radius, he couldn't see the point. The Doc had helped them, Apollo had seen his concern when the Chief had begun to lose it. There seemed little point in frakking it up - especially as the Doc had seemed as keen to get away from the other group as they had. Why lose the only ally they had here?

Apollo had no idea who he was – some sort of medic from the way he had stitched up the Chief's wound, but _what_ he was and why he had helped them escape… well, that was anybody's guess. He clearly wasn't with the group that had captured them. But then he didn't speak English, so communication wasn't exactly easy. Were these Cylons? He couldn't see what else they could be - or _who_ else they could be – Laura Roslin would probably say that they were some lost tribe living on Kobol. Was this Kobol? That was certainly the nearest planet to their last position, but he still didn't understand how the jump back to Galactica had brought them here.

And yeah, it would be ironic if the people here were the lost thirteenth tribe. A hostile lost thirteenth tribe. At least that would explain why they spoke a different language. If they were the thirteenth tribe, then what if they didn't even have space travel? What if they had no idea any other inhabited planets even existed? What if he was getting a little carried away...

If this was Kobol, then Boomer and Racetrack might well be here. But not Starbuck. Her first jump would have taken her right away from Kobol. Either way, he had no idea how Faraday knew where Boomer was. And he couldn't get the image of that map out of his mind. Faraday had plotted all their coordinates. And then probably lied about who went were to get him here in the first place. He should just admit it. He'd frakked up. Starbuck wasn't here. He'd be lucky if that Beacon really was from Boomer's Raptor. But then if this was Kobol, then why hadn't he picked up the signal when he did a sweep of the planet during the Search and Rescue a week ago? Unless Boomer hadn't set up the beacon then. Or maybe he wasn't on Kobol at all and this really was a trap.

Over thinking, Lee.

He wondered what Starbuck would do in this situation. She'd have had the Doc's gun by now.

He felt something shaking his arm and opened his eyes to find the Doc crouched right in front of him, gesturing for him to get up. The Doc said something unintelligible to the Chief, then quietly picked up his left arm and began examining it. The rain had stopped and there was the thin haze of dawn. The Chief winced when the Doc touched his forearm. The Doc frowned, then whispered something else to the Chief who shook his head, making it clear he didn't understand. The Doc took a deep breath and then started to help him to his feet.

Time to move on.

Apollo eyed the dawn uneasily and started walking, one arm under the Chief's good arm as he stumbled through the surf.

They'd only been walking a few minutes when the Doc stopped suddenly. Apollo had been watching the Chief, trying to figure out if he was going to be able to do this. As soon as the Doc's rhythm faltered, Apollo's head whipped up, his body immediately flooded with adrenaline-soaked fear. There was someone there, in front of them, the half light of dawn obscuring her features, but he could see it was the figure of a woman. She was walking slowly towards them, still about fifty yards away, and she'd definitely seen them.

For a tense moment no one moved. Then the woman started moving towards them quickly and soon she was running, pounding towards them through the surf. The Doc didn't move. He hadn't unslung his rifle, and he made no move to defend himself. Apollo waited, taking the Doc's lead. Either there was no point in fighting or he knew this woman. He looked anxiously towards the jungle at the edge of the beach, expecting to see a centurion emerging from the undergrowth.

The girl was nearly upon them now. She looked dirty, disheveled, tired. She threw her arms around the Doc and let out a strangled sob. He braced himself but he didn't move. She said something that Apollo couldn't understand. Then the Doc held both her arms and pushed her away from him.

"_Kaeeeeete, whehhhtsh dooooor harrrrrren hardddt_"


	41. Crazy Talk

Chapter 41

Day 7

Crazy Talk

'Kate?' Jack blinked several times in the thin dawn light. 'What are you doing here?'

Something about his tone made her take a step back. She dropped her arms, still breathing heavily from when she'd run to meet him. He glanced behind her. 'You alone?'

'No.' she turned round, 'Rousseau… Danielle… she's -' The dimness behind her was still and empty, the only sound the waves slapping on the beach. She turned back to Jack. 'She was here, she…'

'Where's Sawyer?'

'He's at the beach.'

Jack nodded, chewing his bottom lip. 'He OK?'

'Yeah, yeah, he's fine. We got back OK.'

'Does he know you're here?'

She frowned up at him, 'No. I came to rescue you, I-'

'I told you to stay away, Kate.'

She took a deep breath, searching his face. Didn't he want to see her? 'I couldn't leave you. I-'

'Yes, Kate. Yes you could.' He grabbed his pack and straightened up. 'You shouldn't have come here.'

Then she saw them, two men standing quietly a little ways off, watching them. Jack had rounded the headland alone, and when she'd realised it was him, she'd just run towards him without thinking. She hadn't even noticed the two men who were walking behind him.

'Who are they?' Kate was immediately bristling with suspicion. She recognized the uniforms.

He shrugged. 'I don't know. Ben was holding them prisoner.' He squinted over at the beach in front of him. 'How far are we from the camp?'

She was staring anxiously at the two men, mentally frisking them for weapons. They didn't look armed.

'How far Kate?'

'About six, maybe seven hours.'

Jack nodded wearily, pulling the rifle up over his shoulder. Then he turned away from her and started walking, the two men automatically following.

She caught up with him quickly, leaning in close. 'See those two, there are three more on the beach,' she whispered, putting her face by his ear, 'Pilots, dressed like him,' she nodded at the man in the fly suit, now watching her carefully.

'It's OK, Kate,' he said, pulling away again. 'They don't speak English.'

'Well the ones on the beach do,' she hissed.

Jack stopped, then turned and walked back to the one with fly suit. 'If you do speak English now would be a good time to say something.'

The man just looked at him blankly.

Jack shrugged. 'Let's go.'

'Jack,' he turned as she reached for his arm again. He looked at it uncomfortably and she pulled her hand away. 'Sayid – well, Sayid doesn't trust them, and…'

'Ben wants them dead, Kate. That's good enough for me.'

He was different with her now. Cold. She took a deep breath and carried on talking. 'The Others have a listening post - it's like a surveillance line that runs right across the Island. It's up here a ways. If we stay here on the beach they'll be able to see us.'

Jack squinted over to where the dawn light was quickly lightening the sky. He clenched his jaw tight and nodded thoughtfully. 'Right.' Then he carried on walking. She stood watching him for a moment. Something was off, really off.

She cast a nervous glance to the two pilots. One had on a flying suit like Boomer and Racetrack, the other was dressed in green military fatigues like the one they'd pulled out of that plane. They were watching her blankly, their expressions carefully guarded. She dropped back behind them and took up the rear. At least if they tried anything she could warn Jack.

They walked in silence, her anxiety climbing as they got close to the area that Rousseau had identified as the listening line. It was clear that the two men in front of her were exhausted, the heavier one especially; he was nursing his left arm and stumbling through the shallow surf. The other looked in better shape, his movements still smooth and lithe. He looked tired but still alert; she could tell that he was aware of her, and Jack and their surroundings. He was the one to watch.

It was light now and the sky was still brightening. The shadows had changed from grey to full colors. Now all the shapes had sharpened around her; rocks, sand, sky, sea. When the dawn came here it came fast and too soon it was broad daylight and she didn't want to be walking there on the beach fully exposed. But Jack kept right on going. She trotted to catch up with him, glancing warily over at the two pilots as she overtook them.

'Jack, shouldn't we get under cover?'

'Why?'

'Anyone can see us.'

He shook his head. 'Juliet said that this was the safest way.'

'Juliet?'

Wasn't she the crazy blonde woman who had stuck a gun to her head? And then shot the guy who had been about to kill Sawyer. OK, so she helped them escape in the end, but no way would she trust that woman with anything. Especially not her life. She was with _them_. She was a cold killer. Juliet. She had a name, and Jack was saying it with a layer of affection that had Kate instantly prickling. Had The Others got to him somehow? What the hell was going on?

'You got a problem with that, Kate?'

_Yeah. She had a problem with that._

She gave him a sideways look but was silent. Was this a trap? All her instincts were screaming at her to get under cover, get into the jungle where at least they had half a chance of hiding if they were found. Jack was acting so weird she wondered if she should even take him back to the camp. She suddenly wished Sawyer was there with them. He'd at least help her to figure it out.

They walked on in silence, the time dragging achingly slowly, her nerves stretched taunt until finally, finally she recognized the place where Danielle had hidden them both the day before – there was the stretch of grass where the little dugout was hidden amongst the small patch of dunes at the edge of the beach.

'Here. Danielle went inland here.' She didn't even wait to see if Jack and the two men were following before she headed away from the surf and clambered over to where the little hideout was – or rather where it had been. She felt Jack coming up beside her.

'There was a hideout here.' She said quietly. 'Danielle must have come back and destroyed it.'

Jack was looking around nervously. 'We'll rest here.' He gestured for the two men with him to sit down. They collapsed heavily in the shade at the edge of the jungle. She watched silently as Jack gave them some water and food from his pack. Once they were settled he came over to her and pulled her aside, out of earshot from the two men.

'Now.' He said quietly, 'Tell me about the ones on the beach.'

She thought for a moment, 'Three women, two of them dressed like him,' she nodded over to the one in the flight suit, 'they ambushed us at gun point when we escaped, when you…' she paused, 'When you got us out of there. But they spoke English, Jack. Perfect English. They said they were with the military and their plane had crashed.'

'They didn't hurt you?'

'No. And they put the guns away once they realized we weren't with the Others.'

He nodded thoughtfully.

'When we made it back to the camp there was another plane crashed on the beach. They got the pilot out of it just before I came to find you.'

'Was the plane damaged? Could it fly?'

'I don't know. It was dug in pretty deep.'

'Did they say who they were?'

'Not really. I mean, it didn't make sense. They said they were from some battleship – colonial fleet? It didn't sound like they were regular US military. Sawyer thought they might be some sort of militia – or mercenaries.'

Jack was frowning. At the mention of Sawyer she saw his jaw twitch. Was he jealous of Sawyer? Was that it? She felt a stab of guilt, remembering how far she'd taken things with Sawyer. Too far the wrong way, as it turned out. Did Jack know? Had someone seen them and said something to him?

'If they're mercenaries, then that could be why they don't speak English.'

'But what are mercenaries doing here?' she glanced over at the two men. Mercenaries? For what?

He shrugged.

'Boomer – the pilot we met, she said she'd lost control of her plane when she was trying to land. Maybe it was an accident and they just crashed here like us.'

'Did you see the plane?'

'Yeah. I came by that way. It's up on a ridge by the camp. It looks pretty beat up – but the radio might still work. We'll be passing by that way.'

He nodded. 'You better rest, Kate.' Then he turned away.

'Jack?' she called out softly. He paused. 'Are you ?– is everything OK?'

He gave a sort of breathy half laugh and shook his head slightly, like he thought it was funny. 'Yeah. Everything's fine.'

She watched as he walked wearily over to where the other two were resting and slumped down in the shade with his back to a tree, cradling the rifle in his arms.

00000

The sun was up when Charlie wandered into the kitchen area, scratching his chest while he pondered which version of the Dharma cereals to tempt himself with that morning. Rose was already there, busying herself washing dishes.

'Mornin' Charlie,' she said pleasantly, 'You're up late this morning.'

Charlie yawned. 'Yeah, guess it was all the excitement of wondering whether some mad plane was going to bomb the crap out of us. And hiding in a bush wasn't exactly conducive to a good night's sleep.'

'Well, I slept very well in my little tent, thank you,' she said, smiling broadly. She winked at him and piled the clean plates onto the table to dry.

'How's Boomer?'

'Better. Starbuck gave her another of those injections this mornin'. I think she's gonna be OK.'

Charlie smiled in relief. 'So where is everyone?' he looked around. Most of the beach shelters were empty. Looked like most of the camp had decided to sleep in the jungle after all.

'Mostly still sleepin'. I guess not many of you got a good night's sleep. But the two pilots – they were here a moment ago. Maybe they're already gone.'

'Gone? Where?'

'They said they was goin' to their plane. Oh, no, there they are,' she pointed to the water's edge where he could see the two girls getting a wash and talking earnestly. At least it looked like Racetrack was washing. Starbuck just seemed to be standing there.

Charlie fixed up his breakfast, collected some food for Claire and took it carefully back to the bush they'd been hiding in. When he saw that both Claire and Aaron were still sleeping he backed off quietly and headed back to the kitchen area.

Sayid was standing there looking like the cat had just eaten his breakfast.

'I'm going with you,' Sayid was raising his voice and Starbuck and Racetrack were there with him. Racetrack was standing awkwardly to one side while Starbuck packed some water and food into a bag.

'No. No civilians.' Starbuck was saying firmly. 'I'm taking Racetrack and we'll do a recon on the plane and make sure it's all safe.'

Charlie shook his head. It was too early for them to be having row already. His hangover head wasn't going to take it. He just hoped Sayid would keep his cool, but one look at him confirmed that he wasn't. Sayid was watching Starbuck with something bordering on hatred, his eyes like black coals.

If Starbuck noticed she didn't seem to care. In fact, she barely acknowledged he was there. Only the tight clenching of her jaw gave away her irritation. Charlie winced as she suddenly turned away, slinging the pack over her back in a quick, jerky movement. Sayid didn't flinch. Starbuck nodded to Racetrack and they both slipped into the cover of the trees. Charlie wondered what Racetrack made of it all – Maggie. He'd rather think of her as Maggie, though when she was doing her military thing Maggie seemed too soft for her. As Starbuck's sidekick she seemed hard as nails. She was all soft with him and Hurley and hard with Starbuck.

It was funny how far the context made the person. Like here he was; clean now, no drugs, with Clare and Aaron and happier than he'd ever been – and all because he'd crashed on this desert Island. And when he'd been involved in the Catholic Church he'd been a good little altar boy – and then in the band he'd been the bad little drug addict. It was all context. Was everyone so weak that their surroundings made them who they were? He hoped not. He hoped that he, for one, was stronger, better than that. For Clare and Aaron's sake. He wanted to be the best he could for them, regardless of where he was and who he was with.

'Where's Sawyer?' Sayid's voice jumped him out of his thoughts.

Charlie looked around, clicking back into the present. 'Uh, dunno. Still asleep, I guess.' And then he waited, curiously, to see what Sayid would do now. Go after them by the look of it. Sure enough, Sawyer was standing in the kitchen five minutes area looking groggy and disoriented with Sayid impatiently stuffing food and water into a pack.

'So is this where I join the great expedition, then?' chirped Charlie. Sawyer still looked half asleep.

Sayid shouldered his pack and pulled out a handgun. Charlie watched as he checked it over. He noticed Sawyer now had the rifle and was holding it nonchalantly resting over one arm.

'It's OK, Charlie, we don't need any more.'

'What, just you and Sawyer?'

'Yes. We can take care of it.'

He couldn't believe this. Who did they think they were? 'Oh, I get it, only the Great White Hunters get to go on this one, do they?'

Sayid looked at him with something bordering on amused disdain. 'I hardly think that is a very appropriate analogy, but yes, Charlie, I'm taking the person who will be the most useful.'

'So I'm not useful? Is that what you're saying, Sayid? Because frankly I find that-'

'You're needed here to look after Claire and the camp.'

'What a pile of bollocks!' he fumed, 'That's just an excuse-'

Sayid sighed. 'OK, so here it is: you're unpredictable and at the moment that is something that might well get us all killed. I'm sorry. I can't risk it. Besides, we do need someone here at the camp. Let's go, Sawyer.' Sayid brushed past him, giving him a look that left Charlie shaking with rage and indignation. Sawyer just shrugged at him apologetically and plodded along behind.

'What was that all about?' Claire was awake now, standing in the kitchen area, rumpled and yawning. She was holding Aaron in one arm.

'Sayid and Sawyer have gone to look at the plane. They wouldn't let me go with them. They said I was unpredictable. Who do they think they are? Did you see the look he gave me? He might have just as well said, 'Sod off you useless piece of shit'. I mean, honestly, they're so full of themselves.'

'Well they're welcome to it,' said Claire, jiggling Aaron on her hip, 'I mean, I don't really see what difference they've made anyway.'

'No, you're right – I mean, _I'm_ the one who killed bloody Ethan, _and_ got Aaron back from the mad French Woman. All that lot seem to do is strut around the jungle like a bunch of posers. _Losers_,' he spat, 'If anyone's a bloody liability, it's them. Listen, do you want me to take Aaron for a bit? Let you get yourself sorted?'

Claire smiled, 'Thanks, Charlie, that'd be great,' she eased the baby over to Charlie's arms. 'I'll just go and get cleaned up a bit, take a walk, OK?'

'Yeah, Sure, me and Aaron will be just fine, won't we little Airy?' He caught her smile as she turned to go. 'I think she likes me!' he said to Aaron in a sing song voice, 'Yes, she does! C'mon mate, let's go for a walk along the beach. We might find some crabs, or some shells, or look, let's go and see what Uncle Hurley is up to. You like your Uncle Hurley, don't you?' the baby smiled back at him.

'Is Hurley OK?' Claire was squinting down toward the beach.

He swiveled round to follow her gaze. Hurley was standing by a pile of rocks with his hands over both ears.

'He's acting kind of weird.'

'He doesn't drink enough.' Rose observed, 'He's a big guy, needs to drink more.'

'Looks like Uncle Hurley is a little bit hung over today.' He gave Aaron a little jiggle, making him smile and Charlie's heart feel like it was fit to burst with love and happiness.

Claire smiled at them both and he grinned back like an idiot.

'He's probably love sick because Maggie's gone to look at that plane.'

'Don't you think you'd better check up on him? Here, I'll take Aaron, you go see if he's alright.'

00000

Hurley covered his face, 'I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy,' he muttered, screwing his eyes tight shut. He held them closed for two long seconds, then snapped them open again, willing him to be gone. But the man just smiled at him, then turned back to tossing little stones into the ocean.

'Come and sit down, Hugo,' he said.

Hurley shook his head, 'I'm not crazy, and you don't exist.'

'That's right,' said the man, not bothering to contradict him, 'But I still want to talk to you. It's important. Please. Take a seat.' The man patted the rock next to him, looking over with a welcoming smile. Hurley stayed where he was.

'I just want you to take a message for me.'

Hurley took two steps backwards, 'I'm not crazy,' he recited, 'I'm not crazy, you're not real,' tripping over himself as turned he ran back along the beach.

'What's up, Hurls? You training for the London marathon or something?' Charlie hauled him up and patted him on the back. Hurley stood awkwardly with his hands on his knees gasping for breath. He looked back under his arm. The man was still sitting there on the rock. When he saw Hurley looking at him he smiled and gave him a little wave.

'Dude,' Hurley gasped at Charlie, screwing his eyes shut and then risking another peep under his arm. The man was still there. Hurley looked from the man to Charlie. He looked just as real. They both did. Just as real as each other.

Crap.

He stood up, his back facing away from the little gathering of rocks and the non-existent man sitting on them. 'Charlie, you see anything? Over there, behind me, on those rocks?'

Charlie squinted behind him. 'Um. What am I looking for?'

'Just tell me what you see.'

'Okay. There's sand and well, a very nice rock, waves…'

Hurley felt his heart thump louder. It was happening again. He _was_ going crazy.

'Are you OK, mate? You're looking a little peaky.'

Hurley turned around. The man was still there. Standing now. Clearly. Right there in the broad daylight. Unmissable.

He turned back to Charlie and felt himself blanching white like he was going to puke. Charlie's concerned face was going in and out of focus.

'OK, take it easy. Look, I'll get you a drink of water, OK?' He felt the bile rising in his throat as he watched Charlie heading up to the camp, leaving Hurley to sneak another glance behind him. This time the man had gone. Hurley shook his head, 'Man, this is bad, ' he muttered, 'This is really bad.'

He put his hands over his ears and shut his eyes. Maybe if he cut out the outside world for a while it wouldn't happen again. Maybe his senses were just in overdrive.

'Hurley?' He could hear a voice, muffled, calling to him. This wasn't happening. It wasn't real. 'Hurley, you OK mate?'

He didn't move, but stood with his eyes shut and his fingers in his ears. If he stayed there long enough it would all go away.

Then he felt the tap on his shoulder.

With a roar he jumped up, spinning round to find Charlie stepping back in surprise. 'Hey, it's me. Charlie. You sure you're OK?'

Hurley ignored him and turned back to the rock. The man was there again.

'If I do it will you leave me alone?'

The man cocked his head and smiled. 'Sure. Just one message. You think you can do that?'

'What you talking about, Hurley? If I do what? Of course I'll leave you alone, I just wondered if you needed…' Charlie's voice faded as Hurley turned to face him.

'I'm going after them, dude.'

'What? Going after who?'

'Starbuck and the others.'

'What? What's going on? Hurley? Hurley!'

Hurley was already striding purposefully up the beach.

'Alright then!' he heard Charlie shouting after him, 'Yes, I'll come with you.' He could hear Charlie running to keep up, then felt a pat on his back as he caught up and trotted breathlessly next to him.

'No.' he said firmly, 'I have to do this alone.'

'But how are you going to find them? I mean, you're not exactly the Lone Ranger or Tonto when it comes to tracking, now are you? I know where the plane is. Don't worry, I'll get you there.'

Hurley's face was set hard and he didn't reply, but marched past the camp, through the kitchen area and into the jungle.

'Right. OK. So no supplies then.' He heard Charlie's voice from behind him.


	42. Actions Speak Louder

Chapter 42

Actions Speak Louder

It was clear right from the get go that they were being followed. Not that Sayid was doing anything to hide the fact that he was tailing them, but he was still keeping out of sight and it was annoying the hell out of her. Sayid was a pain in the ass. Starbuck had better things to think about - like if a frakking Cylon patrol was out there, or how to fix up the ECO station on the Raptor so that they could get a signal out to Galactica. The last thing she needed was to be distracted by trying to figure out whether or not Sayid was going to jump them. Besides, she wanted to get the firearms out of the Raptor's back locker without being seen and then she wanted to strip out the rest of the ordinance. She planned to hide it all someplace safe and secret where she could find it in a hurry without anyone else knowing where it was. For that she didn't want Sayid breathing down her neck.

It wasn't so far to the crash site now. She could hear Sayid behind her; he wasn't even trying to be quiet. It was almost like he was doing it to rile her. Well, he was frakking succeeding. She automatically tensed when there was another sound behind them. She glanced back down along the trail. Nothing. Racetrack was plodding along beside her, totally oblivious. Hell, she was even turning her face up to the sun when it broke through the canopy, smiling up at it like she was on some frakking nature walk or something. Another sound. Frak it, this was so frakking annoying. Starbuck pushed around a twist in the thin trail and pulled Racetrack to the side, putting a finger to her lips to tell her to be quiet. Racetrack looked surprised but had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.

Then Starbuck stood facing the way they'd come, her hands on her hips.

It didn't take him long. Within a couple of minutes Sayid had rounded the bend in the trail and stopped abruptly. When he saw her his face immediately took on that twisted sneer. Gods she hated him. Nothing would give her more satisfaction than punching away his smug little smile. Her fist flexed by her side. Itching to do it. But then she was distracted by the sight of Sawyer stumbling up behind Sayid, looking like some overgrown puppy, all gangly limbs and shaggy hair.

'That's it?' she said mockingly. 'Just the two of you?'

'Hand picked.' Sawyer's easy grin did nothing to lighten her mood.

She glared at both of them, but didn't say anything. What was the point? Instead she let out an irritated sigh, turned on her heel and carried on walking. At least this way she could make sure Sayid was somewhere she could see him. She slowed down and moved off the trail, letting Racetrack take the lead and giving Sayid an exaggerated wave to go ahead of her. Maybe she could jump him from behind and tie him up to the nearest tree or something.

Truth was she didn't trust Sayid anywhere near the damaged raptor. She didn't trust Sawyer either, but at least she could handle him. There was something about Sayid that put her on edge. And she'd already experienced first hand that he was a formidable opponent. For a moment she thought about making it a whole lot easier for herself by shooting him in the back right there. A neat solution, but possibly not very smart in the longer term.

If only Helo were here – where he should have been. Then they'd have taken on these clowns. Even Crashdown would have been better. The guy was a crazy bastard, but at least he could punch straight.

Starbuck was desperate to get a chance to question these people properly, and so far she'd been outnumbered – and even now, with Sawyer and Sayid the odds were not in her favor. So she swallowed the one hundred and one questions she wanted to ask - like where they were really from and what the frak they were doing here. With Helo or Crashdown she'd have risked it. But not with Racetrack.

Racetrack was plodding along at the front, chatting amiably with Sawyer, oblivious to the possibility that she might be in any sort of danger. Sayid kept close behind them, but he kept angling his head so that he could watch her from the corner his eyes. He walked like a cat, minutely aware of her all the time.

It wasn't long before Sayid dropped back, smoothly falling into step beside her. 'So,' he hissed menacingly. 'Who are you? And what are you really doing here?'

Ok, so Sayid had figured out which way the wind was blowing and had decided to make his move. Nothing like the present, huh? Before he could say anything else, she snapped her arm back and hit him hard in the mouth. He staggered in surprise. Hadn't expected that, huh? The moment he was off balance she scooped his legs out from under him and threw her weight onto him, pushing one knee hard onto his back and pulling out her sidearm in one swift movement. Within half a second she had her gun pointed at his head. She clicked off the safety. 'Let's get one thing straight,' she said between gritted teeth, 'I'm the one asking the questions. Not you. Now. Why don't you tell me where the frack _you're_ from and what _you're_ doing here?'

Sayid didn't say anything. He didn't even look scared, just glared at her with the one eye she could see while the rest of his face was stuffed into the dirt.

'Oh great, the lovebirds are at it again,' she heard from further up the trail. Sawyer's voice. Then a stifled giggle from Racetrack.

_What the frack?_

She growled in annoyance. What the hell was Racetrack doing? She shoved the gun harder at Sayid's head, using her free hand to twist his arm behind his back. He grunted in pain. 'Answer my frakking question. What are you doing here?'

Sayid was silent.

'Answer me, or I'll blow your frakking head off.'

'Well, that's you told, Gunga Din.' She could hear Sawyer's voice right next to her now. He sounded amused. Where was Racetrack? She hoped to frak that Racetrack had Sawyer covered. She couldn't afford to check though, she knew she had to keep her eyes fixed on Sayid. No way could she make the mistake of glancing away even for a split second. Sayid was watching her every movement. One wrong move and she knew he'd make his move and their positions could too easily be reversed.

'I could do with some support here, Sawyer.' Sayid was saying, his eye still fixed firmly on Starbuck.

'Yeah, well, I think the lady's right to be pissed. These people are trying to help us leave this Island and what, were you trying to ask her questions? You can't blame the girl for getting antsy. I bin on the wrong side of your questions Sayid, and I'd be lyin' if I said they was friendly.'

Starbuck licked her lips, resisting the urge to look up and check where Racetrack was, or whether Sawyer was bluffing or not.

'Hey Sundancer, how's about we get Gunga Din here to promise to behave himself and then we can get going and get this plane fixed and get the hell off of here?'

_Bluffing_.

Starbuck didn't move. No way was she falling for this.

'Look,' Sawyer said quietly, she could sense him right next to her now, crouching down so that she could see him out of the corner of her eye. 'I know that we don't fit your picture of who we should be, and you sure as hell don't fit ours, but seems to me that all of us want to get off of this place, so why don't we just call it quits get the hell off this island and sort it out later?'

She grit her teeth and clamped her hand down harder on the gun. Sayid let out a stifled gasp. She was hurting him. Good.

'Look, much as I like seeing Sayid getting a smack in the mouth from a girl, this ain't going to get that plane fixed. Now there's a bunch of people across this Island who've been trying to kill us from the minute we got here, and they're the ones who scare me. Now, if you people can get us off this Island then, hell, I don't care who's payin' you or why you're here.' There was a pause, then he started talking again. 'Seems to me we're on the same team. So why don't we all play nice, work it together and figure the rest out later?'

Starbuck stayed completely still. She didn't like it, but Sawyer had a point. And what was she going to do now? Shoot Sayid in the head? Tempting. But she wasn't crazy enough to think that Sawyer would just sit by and let that happen. He was armed with that rifle. She sighed and pulled back a little. 'Racetrack' she said, 'Cover me.' She heard the sound of Racetrack pulling her sidearm out of it's holster. Frakking hell, the girl had just been standing there watching? She took a deep breath and leant back onto her toes, quickly releasing Sayid, but keeping him covered. Sayid kept still, then raised his arms slowly and stood up. Once Racetrack saw everyone was standing she holstered her sidearm.

'Good, so let's all just ease up nice and slow and get on with this, shall we?' Sawyer stood up and nodded over to Sayid. 'Sayid, why don't you come up front with me?'

She could see Sayid figuring his odds, but he finally nodded and turned to go on with Sawyer. The corner of his mouth was bleeding where she'd hit him. At least now they were even.

000000

Hurley's mouth felt dry and he anxiously ran his tongue over his lips. He could feel the sweat pouring down his back, which made him wriggle uncomfortably. He didn't want to be here, but now the man had re-appeared as soon as they got here and was standing over to the side, just at the edge of the tree line.

The man was watching him, his head cocked to one side and a small smile playing on his lips. 'You good to go?' he asked, not unkindly. Hurley nodded dejectedly. This was it. He knew he was crazy, and after this everyone else would know too. 'Call her,' the man said softly. 'Her name is Kara.' He said the name like a caress.

'Um, you OK, Hurley?' Charlie touched his arm briefly. In spite of Charlie's insistent questions, he hadn't said anything during the hike up here. What was there to say? That some dead guy had appeared to him at the beach and now he was running errands for him?

'Call her.' The man said again.

Hurley shook himself, ignoring Charlie's concern and focusing instead on getting this whole thing over with. He'd say it all, everyone would laugh, and he'd go back to the beach and hide out for a while.

'Kara,' he repeated, raising his voice a little so that it would reach right across the clearing to the damaged Raptor.

He could see them all leaning over inside the plane – he recognized Sawyer's back, and Racetrack's. He could only assume Sayid and Starbuck were further inside. He didn't know who else was there. He couldn't remember who all went along. They must have heard his voice but at first no one moved, and for a split second he felt a flood of relief. There was no one here called Kara. It was all just his crazy imagination. Well, he knew that anyway. He looked over at the man, who didn't seem at all phased by the lack of reaction. Racetrack had turned around and was standing by the side of the Raptor, looking at him strangely, but apart from that no one else had moved. Charlie was still standing beside him. He could feel relief beginning to form.

'You'll have to say it louder, Hugo,' the man said from his spot by the trees.

'Dude,' Hurley said under his breath. He gave the man another pained expression and then walked closer to the knot of people huddled around the plane.

'Kara,' he said again, at the same volume as before, hoping no one would hear it. He looked pleadingly at Racetrack. She still hadn't moved, but was now watching him with - what? Fear?

_Crap_.

With a mounting sense of horror he saw Starbuck crawl out from under the Raptor's belly, her tanks covered in engine oil and grease. OK, so she hadn't been inside the plane after all, she'd been under it. Once he'd registered that fact he could feel his skin beginning to crawl and the fear hardening in him as she looked at him curiously, then suspiciously, wiping her hands down her pants as if she was spoiling for a fight. Which, knowing her, she probably was.

Was her name Kara? He desperately searched his memory – they'd talked about names last night by the fire. Racetrack was called Maggie, and Boomer – Sheryl or Charlotte or something. He'd been drunk. He couldn't remember. But he was sure there'd been no Kara. They'd talked about Starbuck but – had they mentioned her real name? Why hadn't they mentioned her real name?

He took another deep breath, another nervous glance at the man, and then he started talking quickly, repeating word for word what the man was telling him.

'I've got a message from Zak, OK?' He took another deep breath, 'He says it wasn't your fault. The engine mounting was loose, there was a crack. It wasn't your fault. He says it would have crashed anyway.' He looked up. Starbuck's eyes had narrowed and her jaw was set hard. He flinched, then glanced over to the tree line. The man was still there.

'Say it, Hugo,' he said.

Hurley swallowed hard, shut his eyes tight and kept going, 'Look, he saw the report, OK? The one you left on your desk, the one he was supposed to see. He knew you were going to flunk him, but he thought, he says he still thought he could pull it off. Look- he says he chose it, OK? It wasn't your fault.'

He opened his eyes. He couldn't read the expression on her face. Her hands were on her hips but he could hear a sort of soundless growl coming out of her. Then the man was speaking again, more insistently, like he sensed the window was beginning to close. Hurley didn't know who he was more scared of, the dead guy or her. He gulped and carried on, 'And he says – you and Lee, he just says, stop frakking around, Kara, get on with it.' Suddenly she sprang at him, her hands around his throat. Hurley reeled back in terror. The man was still talking, 'He says he's OK with it. OK? He's says he's OK with you and Lee. He's OK!' With a smile and a nod the man disappeared. Hurley breathed a sigh of relief until Starbuck grabbed her gun and shoved it against the side of his head, pushing him down onto his knees.

'Shut the frak up!' She was screaming at him. He cringed, wanting to put his hands over his ears to shield himself from the noise, but too scared to do anything but turn to kneeling putty. Then he heard the click of a safety coming off and out of the corner of his eye he could see Sayid aiming his gun squarely at Starbuck.

He shut his eyes and waited.

One tense second. He was too scared to speak, too terrified to even move. He could feel Starbuck's rage. She was totally out of control.

Then he heard a new voice calling out from somewhere to his right. It was a man's voice, but not the same as the dead guy's. 'Put the gun down, Kara.' Starbuck froze, her grip on his shoulder tightening as the gun was pressed harder into his head. He could feel her whole body going rigid where it came into contact with his. He froze as well, not even daring to breath. This was bad. This was really bad.

The new man was speaking again. 'I said put the gun down, Kara.' Was this new guy dead as well? – but then if Starbuck could hear him, he couldn't be dead, could he? He twisted up a little, feeling the gun pressing harder onto the side of his head, swallowing back the urge to vomit. He could see the side of Starbuck's face now. It was wild. She was crazy. And she had a gun to his head. He started praying. Hard. In Spanish.

'Lee.' He heard her say through gritted teeth. 'You're here.'

'Lee's here?' Hurley's voice tried not to sound hopeful, muffled with terror under Starbuck's grip.

'Shut the frak up.' Hurley winced as she pushed the gun down more firmly. 'Did you hear what he said?' she must be talking to Lee now. 'He's a frakking Cylon. They've got my frakking file.'

'Stand down, Lieutenant,' Lee's voice was coming from where the dead guy had been standing, over by the trees. It sounded commanding, authoritative. At least it did to him. He hoped it did to Starbuck too.

Hurley felt Starbuck shift a little, like she was about to pull away, then something rammed into him hard and he toppled over. Then a gun went off.

Then silence.

He lay there a moment, stunned by the blast. He'd been shot. Had he? He waited for something to start hurting. Or maybe he was dead. His ears were still thick from the sound of the blast and he lay there on his back, looking up at the sky. No, not dead. He could see trees above him over to his right. He waited for the pain, for something to hurt, to feel where the bullet had hit him. But he didn't feel anything.

Then next to him he heard a sort of choking sound.

_That_ didn't sound good.


	43. Fallout

Chapter 43

Fallout

Her eyes. He'd been watching her eyes.

_Kate. _

She'd made it. She was here. At the sight of her, he'd felt the tension leave his body right away, the tension he hadn't even realized he'd been holding onto until he'd seen her again.

He'd watched, mesmerized, as she'd pushed her way out of the bushes at the edge of the clearing, elbowing the branches aside to stand breathlessly next to Jack.

_Ah. Jack. _

So she'd found him, then. That figured.

Movement behind her had pulled his gaze deeper into the trees and two others stepped out of the shadows. Military; one dressed in the same kind of fly suit as Racetrack and Boomer, the other in more casual army green, Starbuck style. Both male. Starbuck had been right; they _did_ have men in their girls' army. Neither were armed, but Jack had been holding a rifle. His gaze flicked on them briefly enough to see who they were and clock that they didn't look dangerous. And then he went back to looking at her.

She'd appeared so suddenly at the edge of the jungle like some sort of apparition, the surprise evident on her face, and it pulled his attention away from what was going on in front of him. Hurley had arrived at pretty much at the same time, and opened his mouth to speak just as his eyes had fixed on hers. And then everything else had gone right out of his head because there she'd been, _right_ there, her face dirty and covered in sweat; her beauty had taken his breath away. And like some homing device, his eyes had fastened onto hers.

Which was why he'd missed what was going on in front of the plane.

Would it have made any difference? Would he have yelled at Charlie to stop? Would he have thrown himself at Hurley or Starbuck or leapt around making a noise so they all looked at him instead? Probably not. And there was no way he could have physically done anything – he'd been too far away and Charlie had been right there, right next to Hurley.

But he'd still winced when he'd glanced back to the clearing in time to see Charlie make his move. And he'd even thought the words in his head, too fast to say them out loud. Or maybe he could have said them out loud. Would it have made any difference? _Don't grab her hand, Charlie, she's got her finger on the trigger..._.

Of course the gun had gone off.

Of course it had, they were on the damn Island, weren't they?

_Just when he'd started to care._

There was silence as everyone froze, heads turned to where Charlie was still standing right in front of her, surprise written all over him, then a soft thump as he fell backward, a second, two seconds before the blood started seeping through his shirt.

_When had he started to care? He never cared. That was the thing about him. He never cared. _

Starbuck was standing there, still holding the gun. She looked shocked, shaken. He knew that look, that set of the shoulders.

Another accident.

Sayid had been right. She shouldn't have been allowed near the goddamned gun.

Jack was already running to where Charlie was lying on his back in the dirt, with Kate right behind him. Of course Kate was there, by his side. Of course she was the one helping him. The drill was too familiar by now. They were the perfect team, after all.

Hurley was sitting up now, completely stunned, staring in horror at Charlie, whose eyes were open wide, he was making a sort of gasping, choking noise, and the blood was blooming on his shirt. Shot in the guts. Not so good. Would he die fast or would it take days?

Could any of them stand for it to take days?

_When had he started caring? He hadn't cared in a long time. How the hell had he forgotten about that? Especially here, where people died. A lot._

He glanced over to where Sayid was still holding his own gun. He still had it aimed at Starbuck's head, but no one seemed to be watching him, they were all focused on Charlie, lying there probably bleeding to death. Sawyer shook his head, feeling himself pulling away, making the familiar distance between what was going on in front of him and what was living, breathing, feeling inside of him. He shut it all down carefully, painstakingly. Built of long practice. And then he watched with a new detachment. What was Sayid going to do now? Was he going to shoot Starbuck? He could see that he was seriously considering it.

But there'd been enough dying here for one day. Enough dying for a life-time. Or two.

He leant over and put a hand over Sayid's arm, pushing down firmly until the gun was pointing at the ground. 'Shootin' her now ain't gonna help any.' He murmured quietly. Sayid's glare was surprised, then furious, but he let Sawyer's hand lower his arm, and then he clicked the safety back on.

Maybe even Sayid had had enough of death for one day.

'I told you she was dangerous.' Was all Sayid said, the bitterness ringing in both their ears.

Yeah. He had.

And then they all stood there, open mouthed and awkward while Jack tried to save the day and Kate, his glamorous assistant, tried to help him. And the rest of them waited for death to claim another one.

He didn't even want to think about Clare. Who would be the one to tell her?

_This_ was why he didn't care.

And looking at Kate, well, it was better she had chosen Jack. They could care about each other and get weakened that way, and hurt that way, and get themselves ripped up inside from it. Kate had done him a favor when she'd figured he wasn't good enough and gone for Jack instead. OK, so it hurt. Good. It hurt bad enough to remind him.

_Message received._

He looked around. The new guy, the one dressed in the flying suit, was pulling Starbuck aside, dragging her roughly by her elbow, shoving her away from Charlie's body. The Doc had ripped Charlie's shirt away and was saying something to Kate. Yeah. Pressure on the wound while he checked eyes, heart rate, talked to him. Way to go with the bedside manner, Doc, 'cause no one believes it anymore.

'Stay with us, Charlie.' Jack was saying.

Yeah, that about summed it up.

Stay with us.

Gunshot wounds were a bitch.

Sayid had finally put the gun back in his pants and had gone over to join them, to offer his condolences or his rage. At least he wasn't getting of on raising the body count. For the moment.

The other new guy was still by the trees. He hadn't moved, wasn't even watching them. He just seemed… well, out of it. He was leaning against a tree with his eyes shut, clutching his left arm like he was in pain or something.

Racetrack was with Hurley, side by side, standing uselessly looking on. Sawyer watched as Hurley turned and shuffled blindly away, stopping halfway up the slope to the bluff, wiping his eyes like he was crying, Racetrack watching him go, uncertain whether to follow or not.

_You care too much, Hurley, and that's where it gets you._

'What the frak, Kara?' The new guy had gotten Starbuck far enough away and had his face shoved into hers. He looked mad as all hell. He was talking quietly, like this was a private conversation, but loud enough so's they could all hear. Damage control. The military had to be seen to bawl out the wild card who'd just shot someone for no reason at all.

Guess it was a start.

For once, Starbuck didn't fight back. She let herself be shoved around, let the new guy push and pull and manhandle her, her face still full of horror and disbelief. 'He grabbed the gun, I didn't…' she shook her head, her eyes pleading with his.

Well, looked like she had a conscience. A little late in the day, but it was there.

'Like holding a gun to that guy's head was even OK?' the guy hissed. He glanced around and caught Sawyer's eye. They watched each other for a beat. Yeah, he knew he was being watched, that what he was saying and doing was being clocked, monitored. Sawyer broke contact to check out Sayid. He was following this one too. And from the look on Sayid's face, giving her hell would be a good idea right now.

'What the frak were you thinking?' Another shake. Kind of familiar, though. Intimate. Like these two knew each other a hell of a lot better than they should. Sawyer felt his senses sharpening, the distance giving him a new objectivity, back to something familiar, to standing back enough to get the bigger picture. He was used to reading people, reading their bodies, seeing who was connected and who wasn't. He knew the tells. These two were… well. _Connected_. And Starbuck's body kind of liked being roughed up by this guy. Look how she was moving with him, leaning into him. Almost like she wanted more. More contact, more manhandling, more touch.

He watched as she took a deep shuddering breath, visibly pulling herself together. 'I thought he was a Cylon.' She finally said.

'You thought he was a Cylon?'

'Yeah.'

'OK. I'm listening.'

'You heard him, he must have had my file - how would he know about Zak?'

Sawyer watched as the new guy looked over to where Racetrack was huddled next to Hurley. Starbuck followed his gaze. 'Why would she…?' her voice faltered.

'People talk, Kara. Hell, she might have told him your whole life story. Do you know for a fact she didn't?'

'No.'

'No. And that's it? That was your evidence?'

Her face was stony hard but she didn't say anything.

The new guy looked pissed as all hell. 'So because he mentioned _Zak's_ name,' She winced. 'That makes him a Cylon? I heard what he said, Kara, and no way did any of them deserve _this_.' He waved down at the scene in front of them. Jack was still there, Kate still next to him. Too close. Their elbows were touching. A surge of jealously caught him like a barb. _Crap_. He dragged his eyes back to Starbuck and the little performance he was sure he was supposed to witness.

'I just lost it, I…'

'Yeah. You just lost it. You just frakking lost it. Again. These people are civilians, Kara. You're sworn to protect them, not make them kneel in front of you at gunpoint so you can execute them. This is frakked up, Kara. You've done some frakked up things in your time, but this?'

She looked like she was going to cry. Incredibly. Suddenly she didn't look so tough. This guy had reduced her to… well, to a human being.

And he hadn't finished. But this part was whispered, hushed, his face close to hers, just for her. But he was still too mad to say it quiet enough. 'You're damn lucky that guy there didn't shoot you in the frakking head.' A nod over to Sayid as he hissed in her ear, 'You're damn lucky no one else decided to do anything stupid. But then that's always been your special gift to the world, hasn't it?'

And there. He'd broken her. Just like that, and she turned toward the Raptor hull to hide her face, while he strode back over to Jack and Kate to look helpful and join them in trying to make it all better.

But fixing this didn't look like it was going to happen.

_Killing ain't so easy, is it Sundancer? Ain't so easy at all._

Sawyer stood by the Raptor. He had barely moved from his spot. Waiting. For what? For someone to tell him what to do? For Charlie to die? For something to happen that required him to react? He didn't like how this was going. Didn't like it at all. Each step was predictable, coordinated. Futile. In the end there'd be a new mound of earth and more people crying. Maybe he should just go off somewhere and come back when it was all over.

But that had never been his style, had it? He'd always been there, watching. Always there, witness to things he shouldn't have to see. And he couldn't help but go back, to the dust and the feeling of constriction as he'd lain under the bed, his mom shouting, his dad yelling, the sound of a gun going off…

Life as you knew it could be over so fast. Best to prepare for it before it happened, that way it couldn't destroy you.

He did what he had to do to survive. Then and now.

He felt the outside of his pocket. He could faintly feel the faint trace of the letter, it's outline there, familiar.

_'Dear Mr Sawyer...'_

He hadn't thought about it in a while. It had been something that had kept him going, defined him, for so long. And this last week? He'd almost forgotten it was there. He'd lost it this past week, let himself get… _sidetracked_ into places he had no business being.

He moved closer to where the tiny group was huddled on the ground. Charlie's prone form was almost completely obscured by heads and backs. He leant over next to Jack, keeping Kate away from him. He still didn't trust himself there.

'He gonna be OK?' He didn't know why he'd even bothered asking the question. One look told him the answer. There was blood. A lot of blood.

Jack didn't even acknowledge the question. Score that one as a 'no' then.

'We need to get him to the beach.' Was all Jack said.

'Are you sure we should be moving him?' Kate's voice was trembling, but strong and sure, her small hands still holding the edge of Charlie's shirt.

Sawyer stood up straighter as Jack leaned back and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. His hands were covered in blood. 'If we keep him here he'll die, I need water. I can't do anything for him here. I need to get him to the beach.'

'There's field med kit in the Raptor.' The new guy offered, 'It's got morphine and saline, antibiotics.'

Jack nodded quickly. 'That'd be good.' Sawyer could already see him revising his plan, factoring in the new drugs.

'We took the med kit to the beach.' Racetrack cut in. She was staring down at Charlie, her face totally unreadable. 'But there should still be a stretcher in the back locker.' She looked up then, meeting the new guy's gaze. He nodded to her to go with him, and they both turned quickly to the Raptor.

'Good to see you Captain Apollo, Sir.' She said quietly as they moved passed Sawyer towards the plane.

_Apollo_. The name was familiar – Racetrack had talked about him last night. It seemed like an age away now. Some ridiculously quiet interlude in all this craziness. The beach, the fire, the alcohol. It had all gotten that bit too cozy.

_Apollo._ Starbuck's sparring partner. Made sense. If Charlie hadn't been dying right there in front of them he might have almost found it funny.

Sawyer watched as Racetrack glanced nervously over to where Starbuck was still standing by the plane. Apollo followed her gaze and sighed, then looked away. No doubt giving her the stink eye. Would they be having hot make up sex any time soon? Probably.

Sawyer turned away in disgust.

It took them less than half a minute to pull out a set of metal poles and some canvas that they quickly made into a stretcher, laying it next to Charlie before they heaved him onto it. Then they waited while Jack did some other life saving maneuver to try and keep him alive for the journey down to the beach.

Sawyer quietly gathered up the rifles – his and Jack's, and slung them over his shoulder. He glanced around, checking to see what else they'd missed. Only Hurley, now a crouched figure sitting dejectedly up on the rise. Alone. Sawyer clambered up after him, pausing when he drew near.

'We're moving out.' He said quietly. 'Jack wants to take him to the beach.'

Hurley looked over to where the small group were still huddled on the ground. 'I'd be there – you know, _with him._' Hurley shook his head. He looked utterly defeated. 'But blood? Up close? I faint and I'd probably pass out and fall on him and… _crush_ him…' the sentence trailed off into a sob of despair.

Sawyer shifted uncomfortably. 'Ain't nothin' you can do – the Doc's tryin' to fix him up.'

Hurley responded to that by screwing his eyes tight shut like what Sawyer was saying was hurting him.

Probably was.

'It's bad, isn't it?' Hurley didn't look at him, but stared over to the tops of the trees.

_Silence_. What could he say? What was there to say?

'It looks bad.' Hurley paused. 'It's my fault. I shouldn't have said anything and got her so mad.'

'You think this is your fault?' This was seven shades of messed up. 'Hurley,' he said gruffly, not liking the way this was pulling it out of him, 'Whatever this is, it ain't your fault.'

'You're wrong. It is.' Hurley sighed and stood up slowly, his big bulk swaying under his shirt. 'It's all my fault Sawyer.' Sawyer stood for a moment, contemplating whether to say anymore. But there wasn't anything to say to make this better. Charlie was down there with a bullet wound in his guts and that was that.

Words did squat to change anything. He knew that.

He followed Hurley down to the crash site in silence, handing Racetrack the two rifles with a look that told her to make sure they didn't go off – or end up in the wrong hands and _then_ go off. She took them silently, knowingly, making eye contact for long enough to tell him where her loyalties lay. And then he took his place at one corner of the stretcher, taking the strain as they all hauled on the metal poles and got the stretcher off of the ground. Charlie looked unconscious, but every now and then he groaned.

Was he out of it? Sawyer hoped he was out of it, but that would be too much to ask for, wouldn't it?

And then they were off, silent concentration killing any conversation dead, stumbling along trying to find some rhythm between all four of them and the uneven ground, doing their best not to jar him or trip over, fooling themselves that the trail really was wide enough for them to do this, trying to get down to the camp as fast as possible, trying to pretend that there was any point to this and that Charlie really was going to make it out alive.

Jack and Sayid were on the front two poles, Jack casting anxious, concerned looks over at Charlie every two seconds. Had he stopped the bleeding? Jack had wrapped something tight around the wound and it looked like the bleeding had slowed. But he was still bleeding. What was Jack figuring to do, operate on him at the beach? See if the bleeding stopped on it's own? Hell, the guy was a surgeon, if anyone knew what to do it had to be him.

He looked around for Kate, but he couldn't see her. She wasn't near Jack, anyway. There was Apollo beside him on the stretcher, Racetrack and Hurley behind them, the other military guy, and then Starbuck.

Kate must have gone ahead.

This was going to be one hell of a homecoming.


	44. Beach Party

Chapter 44

Beach Party

It was bright. Too bright. Even with her eyes shut it still hurt.

Boomer lay there as the light pierced her mind in waves of agony.

She must have slept all night because there was no darkness to hide in anymore. It was daytime and the sun was high in the sky. She could see it through her closed eyes, piercing pink, red, bright. Too bright.

At some point the fever must have broken because she felt weak but the aching was gone. Everything inside her felt like water, like the weakness had sunk right into the essence of who she was.

And who was she?

That was totally up for grabs… something fluid, uncertain, a myriad of shifting images that were haunting and ugly and didn't make the slightest bit of sense. Perhaps she wasn't supposed to make any sense of them. This was as much clarity as she found – enough to see that nothing was clear.

All she knew was that the sunshine was too much even when she closed her eyes. It was beating down on the roof of the tiny shelter and searing her mind. All she could do was scrunch her eyes tight shut and let herself get dragged deep inside herself, let the wild, crazy, unpredictable memories take her into their hellish dream-world and engulf her in her own personal brand of hell.

Was it the memories or the light that hurt so badly? The images that flew into her mind were terrible, but whenever she tried to prise her eyes open it was a million times worse. Maybe the memories didn't like the light. Maybe they were evil truths that didn't want to be seen. It sure felt that way.

She braced herself as a series of unconnected images slammed through her mind.

_Cavil_. There was a lot of Cavil. Most of them had Cavil somewhere.

Some of the Chief. A lot of Galactica – a lot of her trying to blow the whole thing to frak. Some of her being happy. Of her and the Chief. Of Helo. Playing Triad in the Officers' Mess. Clandestine kisses with the Chief. The look on his face when he found out she'd tried to kill herself. The look on his face as he wondered if it'd been her leaving the hatch combing open on C-deck… shame rushed through her, then other images, the Chief in civilian clothes laughing with Colonel Tigh, Eleanor with them, and someone else, fair hair. She knew his name… then Cavil again. Still the number one. He was always the number one. The first, the best, above them all.

And she was eight. The number eight. Right at the end of the line. Was there a nine?

More images. Cavil and that elephant. Cavil on Galactica. Cavil kissing her, sneering, manipulating. Did she even like him? Did she kiss him back? Then the Chief, kissing her, passion and love and… the Chief laughing with someone else – fair hair – yes, she knew his name. Sam. Samuel. Samuel Anders. How did she know his name? The image sprung to life. They were laughing together, laughing about Cavil, the dud, the number one, the first attempt, imperfect, flawed. But it wasn't her memory – only it _was_ her memory. Or was it? No, it was more like a photo album, something shared, something visible for everyone to see, a piece of gossip, a shared joke, Just for her – for all of her, for _them_, for us. _Us? _

She was supposed to die. That was what Cavil had told her. Her orders. Orders? From him? From herself? From somewhere.

Somewhere deep inside her she knew that she had to die.

After she had killed.

Kill first, then die. That was it.

Was that from Cavil? Or her?

It was all inside her head. Right inside her head.

But then there was more, something else that swept in, a bigger awareness of all of _them_, _us_, the Eights… a blindsiding new thought slewing its way around the certainty of the death and destruction… incongruous, it didn't fit. It was light, air, hope? Somehow the fluttering of something more, a feeling that all of her –all of _them_? - were good, kind, lovely. After all, they were last ones, the pinnacle, they were _more_… Then _pain_, shooting searing pain, a pain inside her mind like it was burning its way through her, cauterizing those memories and sealing them, leaving her empty and… _erased_.

And then it all started again. Cavil. The little elephant statue. Galactica. The Chief. The number one. The number eight. Who was the dud? Who was good?

_Who was she? _

On and on and on. Round and round.

Pain.

The cycle of agony.

She couldn't move, could barely breath, could only witness herself burning from the inside out.

And she was powerless to stop it.

00000

The race to the beach was a tangle of vines and roots, a crazy dash to get the bleeding man to the camp before he died. The stretcher wasn't heavy but it was awkward with four of them carrying it. Apollo shared their silent concentration as they all worked together, lifting and pulling in concert, trying to keep the stretcher level while still moving as fast as they could. They made a good team. Ironic, seeing as he still didn't have a clue who any of these people were and all his best guesses were turning to flawed crap as soon as he thought them.

He needed to talk to Starbuck and Racetrack - after he tried to stop this guy from dying. He had a feeling things wouldn't go so well for them if he did die. And what the hell had Starbuck been playing at anyway? _Cylons?_ She thought these people were Cylons? He grunted as his muscles were wrenched trying to stop the stretcher from tipping over into a bush. The man next to him had slipped and he had to throw an arm over to support his side, twisting awkwardly as they all came to a lurching halt.

A pause while they got back in sync and they were off again taking the trail at a punishing pace, an edge of desperation tainting their movements.

This wasn't how Cylons did death. Cylons were supposed to download or something, weren't they? They were supposed to be transferred to another body. That's what the Leobin model had told his father. If any of them thought that this guy was going to download, they wouldn't be busting themselves to get him to the beach on time, would they?

No. He didn't think so.

At the front of the stretcher, the Doc was moving quickly and forcing them to keep up, throwing concerned looks at the blood soaked wound and pushing on the pace each time until the four of them were almost jogging.

It was hot. Too hot. Apollo managed to pull the top of his flying suit down with one hand, dragging it to his waist and breathing in the relief as the exposed sweat finally cooled him. He was breathless and tired but he kept on going, gritting his teeth and cursing Starbuck all the way. By the time they hit the beach his muscles were screaming and he was drenched in sweat. Finally they dragged themselves over a small dune bank and were staggering round a small bluff as the camp into view. It took him a moment to realize that this was it, that this was their camp. He staggered up the beach with the others, running the stretcher over towards the small pile of shelters and taking in the sight in front of him.

The beach camp was small and looked like it had been built out of trash. These people were living in tiny shelters made up of the broken pieces of bits of metal and cloth strung into tiny huts. Over by some trees there was a makeshift kitchen area and a couple of roughly constructed containers full of water.

No way were these people Cylons - they were frakking refugees. He looked around, getting as good a look at them as he could. There had to be at least thirty, maybe forty people here. They were standing around looking concerned, keeping their distance and letting the Doc do his thing.

He helped put the stretcher down carefully in one of the shelters and then stepped back.

Starbuck had some explaining to do.

'Water?' The tall guy who'd been opposite him on the stretcher handed him a bottle. Apollo took it gratefully, gulping it down. 'Name's Sawyer,' the man said gruffly.

'Apollo.'

'Yeah. I know.' There was an awkward pause. 'If the Doc can't fix him up, ain't nobody who can.' Sawyer was looking over at the tent. All Apollo could see was the back of the Doc's head, the girl next to him and a pole with a saline drip attached to it rising towards the makeshift roof.

Apollo heard the defeat in Sawyer's voice.

'How'd you get here?' Apollo waved his arm at the camp in front of him.

'Plane crashed.'

Apollo nodded. Yeah, like he'd thought, _refugees_. Though this was way beyond the red line. But then he was here, wasn't he? And Galactica and the fleet had made it this far. So maybe more civilians had escaped as well.

But then… why hadn't the Doc talked to him in English? What the hell was that all about?

He looked around for Starbuck. She was standing awkwardly a little ways off, chewing her lip and frowning.

He approached her slowly, noticing the way she tensed as he drew near. He stood in front of her for a moment without saying anything, then he moved around to stand next to he, watching the events unfolding in the camp in front of them. He felt a sort of weary despair welling up inside of him. 'What were you thinking, Kara?' he finally said, softer now, the anger all gone, What was the point? He was too tired to be mad. He'd seen too many dumb and senseless things over the last few months to even feel it any more. But he watched her out of the corner of his eye as she swallowed hard and turned away, looking out over the ocean.

'I know you won't get this, but… there's something _off_ about these people.' She took a deep breath and shook her head.

'They say their plane crashed.' He said simply. 'And look at this.' He gestured to the camp in front of them. 'This is a refugee camp.'

She snorted and it took him by surprise.

'You don't think so?'

'No.' she took a deep breath. 'Call it a hunch – '

'You shot someone on a hunch?' he could feel the anger rising in him again.

'I didn't mean to shoot him.' She said quietly.

'And what happens when he dies?'

She didn't answer him, just chewed her lip, the same infuriating mix of vulnerability and cockiness. It was all _so_ Kara. How the hell had he missed this?

'OK,' he said, feeling the irritation spilling over again, 'Tell me then, tell me about your _hunch_ because I want to believe that you had a reason for this, but at the moment I really can't see it.'

Her jaw tightened and she ran one hand through her hair. He watched as it fell over her face. She took a deep breath, holding her ground. 'It's like they don't know anything,' she said, 'about the Cylons, the war, who we are. Any of it.'

'And that makes them Cylons?'

'Maybe.'

'Maybe? Oh c'mon, _maybe_ they're from some backwater on Aerilon or Sagittaron– part of some religious sect that said the war never happened. You thought of that?'

The idea had occurred to him as he was saying it, and once it was out of his mouth he could see that it fit. It did. It even explained the language thing and why the Doc and the girl hadn't used English. A lot of the old outposts still had their own dialects. Hell, some of them even refused to speak English at all.

Starbuck shook her head and took another breath, 'I just… look, it wasn't that simple, OK? And… frak it, I'm just a frak up. You should know that by now!' She spun away from him and headed up the beach away from the camp.

He shook his head. Always Starbuck's answer to everything - walk away.


	45. Dreamboat

Chapter 45

Dreamboat

'You'd better not let him die.' Hurley threatened the air. 'I did what you said and look what happened...' He waited a moment. Silence. There was no sound except for the soft puttering of the waves as they pushed up and nudged his feet and then the long hiss as they were sucked back into the sea. Not that he'd expected an answer. The dead guy had conveniently disappeared and he was the only one on this part of the beach. Hurley looked over at the rocks – there was no one there either. Perhaps there never had been. And now Charlie was going to die because he was crazy and listened to dead people. Or people who weren't there. The guy had probably been some hallucination, part of his brain that didn't work right. He'd thought he'd gotten better, he'd thought it had stopped, but now he realized he hadn't and it was just the same as ever. He shouldn't be allowed near ordinary people, he was just a danger to them all. And now that it had started again it was only going to get worse, and Charlie was going to die, and…

'Hey.'

Hurley closed his eyes when he recognized the voice. _Claire_. Pain quickly replaced the anger and desperation he'd been feeling. He chanced a quick, guilty look over at her and gave a grimace that was supposed to be a smile. 'It's all my fault,' his voice shook with the effort of containing the emotion. 'Charlie grabbed the gun. He was trying to save _me_.' He didn't say anything about the dead guy feeding him lines. Nothing about baiting Starbuck until she cracked. He felt even more ashamed.

Claire didn't say anything, but she somehow found his shoulder with an arm that wasn't holding Aaron and pulled him towards her. He could hear her crying softly into his shoulder and his own body shook with the effort it took to contain the shuddering sobs that were breaking out of him.

'We can't lose him.' He finally managed to splutter out.

Claire took a deep breath and pulled away, wiping her eyes with her one free hand. 'Jack's with him. I mean, if Jack wasn't here… and he showed up like that, just at the right time.' Claire looked away and then turned back to him with a brave smile. 'Maybe that's a sign - you know, like fate or something? Maybe it means Charlie will be OK.'

Hurley swallowed hard. He didn't like to tell her that fate didn't make things turn out OK and Charlie was probably doomed just for being his friend. Fate didn't like him. Everything around him was cursed. People died around him. A lot.

'You all OK?' Rose's voice broke into his thoughts. They had drifted down to the water's edge, far enough away for them to talk in private, but he guessed the whole camp must have seen him breaking down. Rose was watching them both with concern. 'Anything I can do?'

Hurley just shook his head wordlessly, feeling the heaviness of the guilt and shame pushing down on him so hard he could barely breathe.

Rose was quiet for a moment. 'Look, if anyone can save him Jack can.'

'Yeah. Jack'll fix him.' Claire's voice quavered with determination. She had turned her attention back to the little shelter where Jack's back was clearly visible. Even from right down by the water, Hurley could see the tension in it. Jack must have done a whole bunch of operations before this; he shouldn't be so tense. He should be cool and relaxed and confident. Unless, of course, he thought the guy he was operating on was going to die. Too many people had died already for any of them to assume it was all going to be OK. So what if Charlie was Charlie, so what if they all cared about him? He could still die, couldn't he? Jack had said it often enough – that there was no point operating on anyone here because the infection would get them anyway. And that was worse. Or something like that.

And they were on the beach. The sand got everywhere and Jack was operating on the ground. He'd get sand in the wound and then Charlie would be all itchy inside and the sand would make it so it never healed – sand was so small, it wouldn't take much, just a little breeze and the sand here got _everywhere_. Why didn't they have him on a table? But Jack knew what he was doing, right? He knew about the sand here. Maybe the sand wasn't so bad after all, maybe Charlie wouldn't die from that…

'Hey, you see that?' Rose's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. 'Is that a boat?'

He jerked his head up sharply and quickly scanned the water in front of them, expecting to see some sort of motor boat or Desmond's sailing boat rounding the little headland. He couldn't see anything, but Rose had one arm over her forehead and she was squinting hard into the sun, staring out to where the horizon met the sea. He followed her gaze and peered just as hard, screwing up his eyes against the glare. The sun was reflecting right off the water where she was pointing. He still couldn't see anything.

'I don't see anything,' said Claire.

'Yeah, look! There!'

He had to agree with Claire. There was nothing there. _Wishful thinking, Rose_. He was too polite to say anything, but it wasn't fair to play games with his hope right now - hope that they might have a hospital on a dream ship that arrived right in the nick of time with a huge operating theater and proper antibiotics. And a transporter like on Star Trek so that Charlie could get beamed right there. That way Charlie might have a chance after all.

But this was the real world, and the tension in Jack's back told all.

He didn't say that to Rose, though. Weird things kept people going. Weird little bits of hopes or dreams that they clung onto. If he'd learned anything over the last few months it was that. And the Island made them all crazy. So Rose could believe what she wanted about dream boats and operating theaters. And maybe he'd just be right there with her. He dutifully looked over to where her mirage was hovering, right under the glare from the sun, wondering vaguely whether he should be checking the beach for Captain Kirk, Spock and Bones – or maybe he'd go with Next Gen and get Jean Luc and that nice woman doctor, what was her name? Dr Crusher, that was it. She'd fix Charlie with a lovely bedside manner – once he'd gotten beamed right into sick bay and had all that fancy equipment fixing him better than new. They'd even cure him of some diseases he didn't even know he had yet. Pity it wasn't true. Pity there wasn't a Star Trek away team right here with them. He turned his focus back to the horizon in front of him, allowed the glare to blind him as he stared fruitlessly into the dazzling sunlight.

'Hey, I think I see it.' Claire was looking just as carefully, holding Aaron awkwardly on one hip while she focused on the shining spot at the edge of the horizon. He strained through the brightness, forcing himself to look into the glare until his eyes watered. But yeah, he thought he could see it now too, it looked like the glint of sunlight off metal.

'It's a ship.' He breathed, then louder, 'There's a ship!' then turning to the beach camp, yelling this time and waving his arms, 'There's a ship! A ship!'

A pause as everyone turned towards him, faces full of surprise. He ran up the beach, waving his arms and pointing behind him. 'A ship!'

Within seconds Sayid and Sawyer were at his side, frantically straining to see where he was jabbing his hand out towards the horizon.

'Well?' Sawyer was moving his head around as if that would help him see around the glare.

There was silence as Sayid kept quite still, concentration written all over him. 'He's right.' Sayid finally declared. 'It's a ship.'

'Well, don't we need to signal it or something?' Bernard was right there too, with Frogurt and a couple of the others. 'Why don't we make the fire all smoky, they'll see that.'

There was a scuffle as everyone scattered to find green leaves and anything else that would produce some smoke. Hurley stood there a moment, his eyes glued to the horizon. Was it real? He swiveled around to check on the tent where Jack's back was still bent over Charlie. Sun and Kate were next to him now, all of their postures rigid with concentration. Hurley's stomach clenched with the sudden urgency of the situation. They had to get to the ship. They had to get Charlie some proper help – not that Jack wasn't proper help, but help with a proper operating theater and antibiotics… and no sand.

'Hurley, take these!' Hurley jumped as Frogurt pushed a bundle of damp leaves into his arms. He must have doused them in the water container because they were soaking wet. Hurley scrambled to catch them all and staggered over to the tiny fire. Sawyer and Sayid were busy building it up while Jin was hovering behind them with an armful of the drier logs from the wood store.

'The ship is still a long way off,' Sayid was explaining. 'With the curve of the earth the horizon is still at least two miles away. Wait Hurley, we need to make sure the fire is large enough to sustain the green foliage. The last thing we need is for it to go out.'

Hurley dumped the leaves on the ground next to them and went back to find Frogurt, shooting an anxious glance to the tent where he hoped they were saving Charlie. '_Please let Jack save Charlie, please let Jack save Charlie_.' he said to himself over and over. He just hoped it wasn't going to be too late. Two miles away? What did that mean? Ships went slow, didn't they?

'How long before it gets here?'

'If they see us then they could be near the beach in ten minutes. But they'll have to anchor offshore, so…' Sayid looked over at the hut where Charlie was lying, the same huddle of Jack, Kate and Sun still bent over him. None of them had moved. And they still looked rigid with strain. Whatever was going on over there didn't look so good.

Hurley watched anxiously as the fire roared to life and the green branches were thrown on. Dark gray smoke immediately spiraled up into the sky. There was no wind and the message was clear and unequivocal. They were here. They were signaling for help. He just hoped that the people on the ship got that.

'Who do you think it is?' Frogurt was asking. 'Hey, you don't think it's pirates, do you?'

'Maybe it's Galactica – you know, Racetrack's ship,' Bernard commented.

Sayid shook his head. 'See the color? It's brown, like a cargo ship or a fishing vessel. Military ships are grey.'

'Unless Starbuck's crowd really _are _mercenaries – then they could be on a brown ship - Hey!' Frogurt called over to Racetrack. Hurley looked to where she was standing with Starbuck and the two new pilots. They were in a sort of awkward huddle a little way away from the camp, flanking Starbuck like they thought she'd be attacked at any moment. Hurley guessed they all felt guilty too - after all Starbuck was one of them and she'd had her hand on the gun. Racetrack was still holding the two rifles she'd brought down from the crash site. He wasn't sure why he felt better when he saw that, but it felt nice, like everyone knew to trust her or something. He trusted her. He knew that she wouldn't have held a gun to his head no matter what he'd said to her. When she heard Frogurt calling, Racetrack said something to the other pilots and then walked cautiously towards them.

'Is that your ship?' Frogurt asked her. She looked confused, frowning at Frogurt before staring out over the horizon. The small brown speck didn't seem to be getting any larger. Perhaps she couldn't even see it. Either way she looked completely baffled. She turned to the man behind her, the new pilot. What was his name? He was looking just as confused, but he stepped in front of Racetrack like he was the one who was going to answer all the questions.

'You think that might be our ship?' he asked, as if it was the most stupid thing anyone had ever suggested. Hurley could see Sayid tensing and Sawyer stiffening in response. _Crap_. This was the last thing they needed. They _needed_ to save Charlie, not have these guys squaring up to each other for another fight on the beach while Charlie was being operated on and the boat that was going to save him was getting away.

'Racetrack said it was an aircraft carrier,' Hurley said loudly, making sure they all heard him. He had no idea if that would help, but no one could mistake an aircraft carrier with a fishing boat, and Frogurt thinking they'd come on that little brown smudge was just plain insulting.

'Well, then I guess it would be gray after all.' Frogurt gave the new pilot a lingering, provocative stare before grabbing another branch and chucking it onto the smoking mess of the fire. 'So let's hope they're not pirates.' he added, this time glaring at Sayid. Hurley wanted to tell the new pilot not to take it personally, that Frogurt was like that with everyone, and he was really quite a funny guy once you got to know him a little.

The pilots were still standing there, but the new guy – oh yeah, _Lee_, how could he have forgotten? – said something to Starbuck and Racetrack. Starbuck shook her head and said something back. He could feel that familiar prickle of discomfort he felt when he thought something bad was going to happen. Then he noticed that Starbuck was staring right at him and he cringed and looked away. He angled himself so that Sayid and Sawyer were between him and Starbuck and then turned his attention back to saving Charlie.

The ship had moved away from the sun's bright spot and he could see it more clearly – a brown smudge running along the horizon. Was it turning? Had it seen them? He glanced over at the fire and then up, up to the column of gray-black smoke snaking up into the sky. There was no wind so the smoke went right up. They had to be able to see that. Would they know it was a signal? Maybe they thought it was just a beach party. Or maybe they really were pirates and a beach party was something they'd be very interested in for all the wrong reasons.

'It's turning.' Sayid's voice was low, calm, but the edge of excitement and hope was unmistakable. Hurley peered at the brown smudge. It looked smaller, shorter, stubbier.

'It'll have to anchor off-shore.' Sayid was murmuring to himself and anyone else who cared to listen.

Frogurt was back with another armful of wet leaves. 'Should we wave?' he asked uncertainly.

Hurley nodded. Yeah. Waving would be good. He'd wave. He ran down towards the water, flapping his arms in the air. _This is for Charlie. I'm waving for Charlie._ He flapped his arm in the air and started shouting at the top of his lungs. 'Help! We're here! We're here!'

Maybe they'd seen him – or maybe it was the smoke, but after he'd waved a few times a loud boom shocked him into silence, and he stood there open mouthed as a red flare filled the sky.

'They've seen us!' He breathed. 'Hey, they've seen us! We're being rescued. WE'RE BEING RESCUED!'

Everyone was running now, the group a huddle of excited voices as the flare slowly died in the sky. They could see the boat more clearly; brown, practical, not so huge, but they'd have a radio, and they could call for help and a helicopter could come and take Charlie to a real hospital and fix him up and then he wouldn't have to die.

As the boat came closer it seemed to be moving faster. Faster and faster and coming directly towards them. As long as these people weren't pirates they'd be fine. Or _Others_. Maybe the _Others_ had a big boat that none of them knew about…

He heard the unmistakable click as Sayid checked his gun. OK, so Sayid was thinking along those lines too. Then the lower clunk of a rifle. He turned to see that Sawyer had taken his rifle back off Racetrack and was standing next to Sayid, his face an impassive mask.

And then there was nothing to do but wait.

They were all staring out to sea. Waiting. Hoping. Hurley didn't dare breathe in case this was all a dream. Or in case something else went wrong and the people in the boat turned out to be the bad guys after all. But bad guys didn't set off flares, did they? What would pirates do with flares? He waited with baited breath. The boat was slowing down. They'd have to have a smaller boat or something where they could get ashore. That would take time. Too much time. He looked anxiously over to the little shelter and Jack's rigid silhouette. Maybe Jack just didn't like operating on the ground and that was why he looked so tense. Hurley swung his eyes back to the water, and as he did a tiny dot on the skyline caught his eye. He frowned. He'd seen that dot before. He glanced over at Sayid.

'Dude,' he said quietly, pointing over to the shape spinning towards the new ship. Sayid followed his hand and froze.

'Is that what I think it is?' Asked Sawyer.

The shape was moving fast, real fast, so fast that when it swooped down towards the ship he almost didn't register it was there. And then it was gone, up and around. A second's pause before the little brown ship exploded in light. The sound of a blast followed a millisecond later.

'Oh crap.'

They all watched as the plane came round for another pass, firing on the ship now with staccato blasts, another flash, another explosion and then it looked like it was all over. Hurley stood with his mouth open, watching as a thin column of smoke rose up from the ship, its black smoke echoing their own signal from the beach fire.

No one moved.

The whole thing had taken about five seconds.

'You think anyone survived that?' Frogurt was standing still as a statue, his voice lacking its usual sarcastic whine.


	46. Busted

Chapter 46

Busted

Sawyer held the rifle a little tighter as he watched his latest hopes of getting off the Island go up in smoke. Dark, black smoke, followed by another loud explosion; it looked like it wouldn't be long before the ship went belly up and sank. He doubted there'd be any survivors, and if there were, they'd need rescuing same as the rest of them. He sucked in a deep breath and forced himself to get used to the new reality. It wasn't as if that hopeful, heady feeling had even lasted all that long; a half hour, tops. And now there was nothing left but that plume of smoke rising up into the sky. He had to stop being so quick to _feel_ - hope, sadness, grief, love... This Island was messing with his head, tugging him around like some dog on a leash. And now he'd been so busy staring out at the ship that he'd lost track of the plane. Which was dumb because that plane had just blown up the ship. He let his eyes scan the skies. It was a moment before he saw it - coming in low, still a relatively small speck hugging the contours of the waves and headed inland right towards them.

'Oh crap!' Hurley must have seen it at the same time because he whipped around and took off running with his head down, slamming right into Sawyer's chest and knocking him onto the sand, leaving him winded and gasping for air.

'Run!' Sawyer could hear someone yelling, then more of the crushing weight as Hurley started scrambling desperately on top of him, trying to get up and run, but tripping over his stomach as Sawyer tried to wriggle out of the way. Sawyer had the rifle tight in one hand, Hurley's shirt fisted in his other – and then someone snatched the rifle away from him. Sawyer could only manage a grunt of protest as Hurley pushed down harder 'Get up the beach!' He turned his head to see Apollo waving his rifle and yelling at the top of his lungs.

Hurley was crazy with fear, determined to scramble his way to nowhere and crush the life out of him in the process. All the time that damn plane was bearing down fast. He grabbed Hurley's arm and tried to push him off, looking up anxiously to where the black shape was getting larger, swooping low over the water as it lined itself up for another of its infamous strafing runs. He just hoped its aim was as bad as last time, but given the smooth way it was flying and the evidence from the stricken ship, he reluctantly doubted that was the case.

He shoved hard, rolling Hurley over and gasping for breath, then he felt arms grabbing him and pulling him firmly up the beach, his legs flailing wildly as he tried to run. Once he gained his feet he shrugged off the help, sprinting fast up the beach at a low crouch and throwing himself down behind one of the shallow dunes at the edge of the jungle. A couple of seconds later Apollo and Starbuck joined him, one arm each on a desperately puffing Hurley. There was a tense half second as they all rearranged themselves behind the tiny dune - Hurley to curl up in a fetal position, his head buried in his arms, and Apollo and Starbuck to line up their weapons at the incoming plane.

The plane adjusted its course slightly, swinging in a little more tightly towards them, flying smoothly and surely, barely skimming the water.

'Aim for the visor,' Apollo was murmuring breathlessly. A pause. 'Take it that's your Raider?' his voice had the hint of a smile.

'Yup. Damn thing went rogue.' she replied grimly.

Sawyer could see Apollo shaking his head. The two of them looked cool, determined. Professional. He cast around for Racetrack but couldn't see her - or anyone else. Only Hurley, who had now crawled away from Starbuck and taken up residence on the other side of him.

He ducked as the plane flew over them, feeling the rush of air as it rose up over the beach. It flew almost silently – no engine noise, like it was some weird kind of glider. He followed Hurley in clutching his head in his hands, grinding himself into the sand, burying himself like some little sand critter. Five shots rang out in quick succession. Then silence.

A grunt from Apollo confirmed that the plane had gone.

He relaxed a notch as he searched the skies. The plane must have disappeared inland because there was no sign of it now. He ran his eyes over to the tiny shelter where Jack was still working on Charlie. Jack hadn't moved. He was still right there, huddled over, doing whatever Doc thing he did. Kate wasn't with him now - at least that meant she was under cover. Just the Doc, on his own, doing the hero thing. Sawyer couldn't help a sort of grudging respect. Jack had just risked being shot to hell for a man who probably wouldn't survive anyway.

Sawyer was about to stand up, dust himself off and make a play at getting that rifle back when Starbuck's voice made him freeze. 'It's coming back around.'

She was squinting as she firmed up her aim, lying flat on her stomach, her tiny handgun held firmly in both hands. Sawyer remembered Racetrack saying that their guns were useless against the plane, and while he admired her optimism, it was obvious that her efforts were futile bordering on crazy. Maybe she thought that being seen to defend them all by shooting at the plane made up for Charlie.

Sawyer ducked again. The plane was right there now. He could hear Hurley praying in Spanish, holding his head in his arms and trying to make himself as small a target as possible. Then there was the rush of air and a staccato of shots as the plane flew right up over them, Starbuck and Apollo following its trajectory as it skimmed over the camp. Their bullets either missed or ricocheted uselessly off the plane's hull. All the shots so far had come from Apollo and Starbuck. The plane hadn't fired on them. Yet.

Sawyer followed its movement as it flew up and around, taking a huge, lazy circle as it headed back out to sea.

Starbuck was squinting out to where the line of thick black smoke was still rising in a single plume in the sky. 'It's coming back.'

'Third time's the charm.' Sawyer muttered darkly. He could see the small dot as it flew over the wreckage of the ship and then back along the same line towards them. He got ready to disappear into the sand again – knowing for sure that this time it would do more than just fly over them. He should have run further into the jungle and kept right on going, not lain here waiting to get shot to hell. He cursed himself steadily as he watched it approach more slowly, much more slowly - the sort of slowly a plane shouldn't be able to do. And then it kind of stopped. Midair. Like it was hovering or something.

'What the...?'

The plane was completely stationary about fifty yards away, parked right there in the sky. How in hell it was still in the air was beyond him. It should have dropped like a stone. Or maybe it was one of those jump jets or something fancy the military had cooked up, but either way it was sitting there in the air completely unmoving. And silent.

Hurley had raised his head and was staring at the plane. 'Dude.' He breathed. 'What is it...?

Something clicked at the front of it, exposing the slit of the visor. An eerie red light began to rove back and forth, a low humming, thrumming noise coming out of it.

There was bloodcurdling yell from somewhere behind them, a scream that sounded completely inhuman, chilling him to the core.

'Chief!' Apollo was holding the rifle tight and rushing to support the man who was now convulsing on the sand. The plane was still hovering, still making the weird noise, the red light still travelling back and forth. Starbuck stood up and started firing, holding her gun straight out with both hands, legs wide, a grim expression on her face.

Something on the visor snapped shut and the plane moved away, flying slowly - almost languidly - like it was taking a really good look at them all. It swung away achingly slowly, and then pulled up and out. Once it had cleared the beach it slammed on the acceleration and moved faster than he'd seen any plane move in his life - faster than a jet fighter, faster than anything he'd seen before.

It looked kind of alien.

'Man. That was...?' Hurley never finished the sentence, staring open-mouthed to where the plane had disappeared over the headland. '... really sci-fi.'

'What the hell was that?' Frogurt's strident voice cut through the mass of murmurings as everyone slowly stood up from their hiding places and stared into the sky. 'That was the plane, right? The same one?'

Everyone ignored him, in no mood for Frogurt right now. Sawyer tuned him out immediately, focusing instead on the army guy lying over in the dirt, shaking like crazy.

'What's wrong with him?'

Starbuck shook her head. 'I don't know - the Raider did something, I-'

'Like, it zapped him?' Hurley offered, then cringed when he realized it was Starbuck he was talking to. She ignored him and stepped over to where Apollo was trying his best to calm the guy. Sawyer saw him look over to where the Doc was still busy with Charlie, then with a frown back to the figure convulsing in front of him. Yeah, the Doc would have been looking at this guy if Starbuck hadn't managed to get Charlie shot in the guts.

'Chief, can you hear me?'

'Here.' Sun stepped forward. 'You need to make sure his airway is clear.' She knelt down next to him and Apollo leant back to make room for her. Sawyer saw she had blood on her hands. Charlie's blood. Starbuck stared at the blood a moment and then looked quickly away. Sun gently held the guy's head, turning him to his side and laying him carefully in the sand.

Apollo took a step back, tugging Starbuck gently by the arm. Sawyer moved closer – close enough to overhear them but far enough to pretend he wasn't listening in. If there was any chit chat going on between these two he wanted to hear it.

'What the hell do you think happened?' Apollo's face was earnest and concerned. And by the way he was sighing and looking around the whole beach he meant more than the guy still convulsing on the sand.

Starbuck shrugged, biting her lip. 'It was like it was beaming something. Or scanning us. You think it did something to him?'

Apollo sighed and shook his head. 'No. I think that's the head wound. Looks like it's given him some sort of fit or seizure.'

She sucked the air in through her teeth. 'Like he's got a clot on the brain or something? Shit. We need to get him back to Galactica.'

'Yeah.' A pause while Apollo took a deep breath and looked around the beach, obviously trying to find some inspiration. Sawyer kept his eyes glued to the shaking man. Sun seemed to have it under control. And yeah, now he looked, the guy had a nasty looking gash on the side of his head. That would do it.

'So why didn't it fire on us?'

Starbuck shook her head and then shrugged. 'Maybe it recognized me or something. Didn't want to shoot its best friend.'

Apollo gave a sort of half snort. 'More likely reporting our position.'

'I thought they wanted us dead.'

'Yeah well, maybe they want Galactica and the fleet first.'

'So this place will be crawling with Centurions.'

'We need to get these people away from here.' Apollo was looking around again, his eyes flicking quickly over the huddles of people slowly emerging from their hiding places.

'Are there any weapons on the Raptor?'

'Yeah, there should be small arms in the back locker. I didn't get a chance…' she let that sentence drop.

'What about communications, anything working?'

'Nope. Dead.'

Sawyer took a step back. _Small arms. Back locker_. He looked around the beach. So Starbuck's crew were going to arm themselves. That didn't sound good. He thought for a second about getting Sayid involved and immediately dismissed the idea. Their chances of rescue were back to where they had been when they'd first landed here, they still had a shortage of weapons, the Doc was back, that guy had his rifle and he had no stash, no nothing. They were back to survival now, plain and simple. It was business as usual, and here, on this Island, weapons were currency.

_Small arms. Back locker._

It was a no brainer.

He took off right away, while they were all distracted by Charlie, the burning boat, the shaking guy and the aftermath of the attack from that plane. He had to be quick, though, as Starbuck would probably be thinking the same and use the confusion to shake off Sayid. He quickly retraced the route they'd taken no more than an hour earlier when they'd been struggling down to the beach carrying Charlie on the stretcher. He could see the occasional spot of blood tracking their journey down to the beach. Sawyer hadn't realized how much Charlie had been bleeding through the canvas underneath the stretcher. That put a whole new slant on his chances. Like they were practically zero now. Charlie had been losing a lot more blood, dripping down steadily all the way.

It took him a little over half an hour to reach the crashed plane, and once he came within spitting distance he paused - maybe it was some sixth sense or something, but at the last moment he decided to approach the plane from the high ground, circling around so that he could get a clear view of it while he was far enough away to duck out of sight if he needed to. At least his instincts were still good, because the moment he crested the ridge he could see someone moving about in the wreckage. Dark pants, sky blue top – _the__ color__ of her eyes_, he thought automatically. He couldn't see anyone else with her. He watched awhile, and once he was convinced she was alone he stood up and walked slowly towards her, picking his way quietly until he was about ten yards off. Then he stood with his arms folded and smiled.

'Well, look what we got here,' he drawled.

She jumped when she heard his voice, turning to face him with a guilty look on her face.

'Caught you.' He narrowed his eyes and smiled.

She recovered quickly when she recognized him, and even more when she saw he was alone. She rubbed her hands nervously down the sides of her pants, her eyes flashing quickly across his torso. He guessed she wasn't checking him out, just making sure he wasn't armed. He kept right on smiling and held both arms in the air, theatrically doing a full turn. 'I'm clean,' he said suggestively.

She relaxed a notch, but stood where she was and watched him warily.

'What, you ain't got that Taser thing?' he asked in mock disbelief. He couldn't quite believe she wasn't armed, but the fear in her eyes suggested that she wasn't. She didn't answer as he swaggered towards her and stood an arm's length away. 'I don't reckon you have, or you would have shocked me with it by now.'

He saw the sudden fear in her eyes. _Definitely unarmed_. He felt a rush of power course through him, remembering how she'd held a gun to Kate's head, her hard expression as she'd threatened to shoot her - and then again, when she'd killed that guy in front of them. She was a cold bitch this one, ruthless.

'What do you want?' she growled. He laughed cruelly. Without a gun her version of menacing was like being growled at by a little kitten.

'Hey, you got it all backwards, sweetheart. You're on my half of the Island now, and that means I ask the questions. So. What are _you_ doin' here?' He moved forward and stood over her, leaning one arm nonchalantly on the side of the plane.

She stared up at him defiantly, 'The same as you, I'd guess. Taking a look at the plane.' Her words sounded tough, but her eyes gave her away, flicking around briefly, looking for escape. It took her a millisecond to accurately figuring out that he'd gotten her boxed her in, effectively trapping her between the doorway of the Raptor and his larger bulk. He was much bigger than she was and from where he was standing right up close she looked small and weak. Without a gun or a Taser she was nothing.

He was beginning to enjoy this. Not that he had any intention of hurting her, he'd maybe just play with her a little - scare her enough to find out what she was doing here, then he'd have to tie her up or something, blindfold her so's he could take a look at that back locker and safely stash anything he found there. Then he'd take her down to the camp. Triumphantly. Making her the prisoner would make up for… something.

'You here spying for Ben?' he asked, raising his eyebrows and not expecting an answer.

Her eyes met his suddenly, blue, direct and piercing, 'Yes, James, I'm here to spy for Ben.' She met his gaze unblinkingly.

He shook his head, smiled and stepped back, waving his arm at her. 'OK, Blondie, you spy away. Don't let me stop you – though I think you'll find they've taken everything out of here already.'

'And that's why you're here?' she asked pointedly.

He grinned, 'Well, I guess you never know what they may have left behind. What does Ben want to know, anyway?'

She sighed, 'He wants to know who they are and where they're from.'

'Well, why didn't he just ask them?'

'He did. They didn't tell him.'

'Oh, right, that's because he likes to beat the crap out of people rather than talk to them nicely.'

'Are we done here?' she asked bluntly, turning to go. He blocked her path.

'No, we ain't _done,_ _Sugar Puff_–' she tried to push past him, but he stepped in front of her, grabbing her arm. 'Not so fast there, _Jitterbug_.' But before he could even blink she had brought her knee swiftly up to meet his groin. The pain slammed into him immediately and he toppled forward, pitching them both into the Raptor. As he fell he reached out an arm to steady himself, trying not to crush her as he went down. He heard Juliet cry out in pain, then a white flash, then nothing.


	47. The Hatch

Chapter 47

The Hatch

Sawyer groaned and held his head, then his groin. _Ouch_, but that woman had not only kneed him in his private parts, she'd zapped him with that damn Taser thing as well. He'd taken the jolt before, but this time she must have ramped it up a setting. He tried to open his eyes, but closed them again when the world spun around so fast it made his stomach heave. OK, so he'd lie here a moment and wait for it all to settle itself down, nice and easy. Then find out where he was. The glimpse he'd gotten of the revolving world wasn't of the inside of that little plane, that was for sure. He got to his knees and shook himself awake, opening his eyes slowly.

Juliet lay on the floor next to him. She was slumped on her side, her feet curled beneath her. Out cold. He hesitated, taking a deep breath as he felt the world tipping again, consciously steadying himself inside and out, determined that he wasn't going to vomit, that he _was _going to look up and the damn world was going to behave itself while he did it. As long as Juliet was still knocked out he had the advantage, so he'd get the Taser off of her and then... a small sound made him startle and look around. He blinked and straightened, squinting hard to focus as he took in the huge chamber that greeted him once he raised his head enough to look. It was cavernous, the floor and walls made of some shiny stone with big white blobby lights dotted around the walls. There was some sort of pulsing sound coming from somewhere and he could hear a voice talking. He shifted his focus down to where the voice was coming from. In front of him was what looked like an ornate bathtub built into the middle of the floor, inside it a woman wearing a swimming cap. It was her that was talking. She didn't look at him, she didn't even seem to register that he was there, but her mouth was moving and words were coming out.

OK, he'd figured it out now. He was dreaming. One of those weird, surreal dreams. If he was lucky it would turn into a different sort of dream and any moment now the girl in the tub would stand up, naked, dripping and...

'_Counting down. All functions nominal. All functions optimal. Counting down_.'

He jumped when the woman started speaking louder, throwing her voice to the edges of the room. He looked more closely at her. She still didn't register his presence and sadly the bath water was opaque so he couldn't see the rest of her, but he _could_ see that there were thick tubes sticking out of the bath, like it had some sort of elaborate plumbing system or something. He hoped this wasn't going to turn into some kinky alien dream where she'd morph into a tube monster before she'd start making moves on him. He shuffled back a fraction, still on his knees, not liking the woozy sensation that filled his head and made his stomach roil.

'_Apotheosis was the beginning before the beginning._

_Devices on alert. Observe the procedures of a general alert_.'

He carefully stood up and leaned toward her, watching in fascination as her lips moved, her eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance. He stared down into the water, hoping he'd get to see a bit more of her, but the view wasn't much different with the increased height. He could still see the black tubes curling out of the top of the tub. Kinky dream or not, he wasn't sure that the whole alien tube thing was going to do it for him.

'_Time and distance are one with the flower of creation, easing the load the children look towards light._

_Who will find the echo of eternity through the portals of time?_

_Call me, the line's open._

_Call me call me any time._

_Finding source. Some call god some call illusion. End of line._

_Reduce atmospheric nitrogen by 0.03%._

_Move one, move on. Time will tell._'

Then the woman threw back her head, arching her body, her face contorted like she was in the throes of some monumental orgasm. 'JUMP!' He felt a twinge of disappointment that she'd left him out of the loop. She hadn't even been naked under there. He caught the unmistakable dark sheen of swimwear underneath as her body jerked backwards.

The dream ended as suddenly as it had begun.

He drifted out of sleep. His tongue was dry. It felt huge and swollen inside his mouth. He experimentally ran it along his teeth, then he flicked his eyes open, trying to lift his head. But the spinning sensation only got worse so he lay it back down again. _Damn that bitch_, then he drifted back into unconsciousness.

Sometime later he tried again. One eye, then two. Then he raised his head ever so slightly. The world seemed to be staying still this time. He squinted and tried to lift the dead weight that was his head enough to look around.

'You're awake.' The voice came from somewhere to his left.

He opened his eyes wider. She was sitting about three feet away from him, her back against a wall and her knees drawn up in front of her, running her fingers nervously through her hair.

'Where are we?' he grated, his voice still rough with sleep.

'I don't know.'

He shook his head, still trying to shift the soreness running from someplace behind his eyes down into his neck, 'Yeah,' he said, easing his shoulder up to his ears, 'I'm sure you don't.'

'I think we're in some kind of store room.'

He looked up, peering around. There was a single light on the wall, the bulb guarded by a metal grill. Even though it wasn't all that bright it still _felt _too bright. He groaned when he moved, twisting to see the rest of the room; tall metal shelving, boxes stacked neatly. Yeah. Store room. He leant back and shook his head, another groan forcing its way out of him. Damn but his head hurt.

'So what do you think happened?' she asked.

He kept his eyes shut and gave a mirthless smile. 'You did.'

'No,' she insisted, 'the last thing I remember you grabbed my arm, we fell-'

'No. Last thing was you kneed me in my privates and _then_ we fell.'

'You were about to attack me.'

'Attack you?' he turned to look at her, not trying to hide the indignation, 'I wasn't attacking you, I was only going to ask some questions.'

'Well, grabbing my arm wasn't a very friendly way to go about it, was it?'

'Touché,' he grunted, then laid his head back on the wall behind him. 'So. Where are we?'

'I don't know.'

'How long was I out for?'

'I don't know. I just woke up a few minutes before you did.'

He smiled, 'OK, Blondie, whatever you say.' He closed his eyes a moment, taking a few slow breathes. His head was still pounding, but it wasn't as bad now, he could feel it fading to a softer rhythm inside his skull. Better. At least he could think straight now. 'So why drug us and put us in a store room?' He pushed himself up off the wall and looked around. The place they were in was small, the boxes on tall shelving ranged around the walls making it look even smaller. The door was what caught his eye, the huge circular wheel in the middle of it an all too familiar clue to where they were. 'So what hatch are we in now?' he asked her, 'Mmm?' He raised his eyebrows when she didn't answer. She was massaging her temples. After an exaggerated sigh she finally looked up at him.

'Like I already told you, I don't know.'

'And I'm supposed to believe that? Like you didn't just zap me with that Taser thing, drug me - _again _- and dump me in here?'

'Well, if I'd done all that, then why would I be in here with you?'

He looked at her intently and then turned back towards the door.

'I've tried it. It's locked,' she said. Deadpan.

He spun the wheel and grunted as he tried to pull the door towards him, tried pushing it, then turning the wheel the other way. He could feel her eyes on him as he finally stepped back in frustration.

'Like I said. Locked.'

'Yeah, well, who would lock us together in a hatch? Oh, let me guess…'

'Ben.' She cleared her throat, finishing the thought for him.

'Yeah. Ben. But why? Apart from the fact that he's a crazy bastard who likes to play mind games.'

'I don't know.'

'Oh, I think you do. I think you know exactly what's going on.'

She sighed and closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. She took a deep breath and then looked over at him, hesitating before meeting his eyes. 'Ben probably hopes you'll kill me.'

He laughed. 'Yeah. I'm sure he does.' He sat down next to her. Too close. She shifted uncomfortably. Gone was the fierce gun toting murderess. This one broke fast and hard. Or at least pretended to. Her little act was a too brittle. He didn't buy it for a moment. 'So why do you think Ben wants you dead?' he asked conversationally - mostly because he was pretty sure that anything she said now was going to be a lie, but sometimes it was useful to hear the lie anyway, and sitting this close was rattling her and getting her talking would give him an idea of how good she really was, give him the chance to spot some of her tells.

She shifted away from him, taking a deep breath. 'He thinks I tried to kill him.'

Sawyer laughed again. The poor little lost girl thing didn't really suit her. Besides, she'd tried that one on him already - like he hadn't spotted how she'd waited until he'd gotten real close to her by the plane before she'd hit him with that Taser thing. Well, let's see how long it took her before she zapped him with it again. He leant over some more, hearing the slight stuttering of her breath as she shrank back a little further.

'Right.' he put his elbows on his knees and cocked his head toward her. 'So you tried to kill him and he put you in a room with me. Nice.'

'I didn't say I tried to kill him. I said he _thinks _I did.' She was looking straight ahead, her face set, refusing to look at him. 'He's probably watching us now.' She added quietly.

'Okaaaaay.' Sawyer pulled away a fraction, looking carefully around the room. Sure enough, there was some sort of surveillance equipment over in one corner, up high. Someone was probably listening in. He waved over at it and smiled in case it was a camera and then settled back next to Juliet.

There was a long silence. So he was supposed to think that Juliet had turned on Ben and was now all harmless and friendly, like now they had a common enemy and he could relax and start trusting her. Yeah. Right. He wasn't that stupid. His head hurt and he was thirsty. He remembered that from the last time. Something about the tranquilizers they zapped him with that made him want to drink a lake.

'Jack said that I'd told him to kill Ben while he was operating on him, make it look like an accident.' Her voice came out thin and clear in the silence.

Oh, so she was back to this one, was she? Hadn't finished feeding him the whole goddamn story. 'And did you?'

'Did I what?'

'Did you ask Jack to kill him?'

'No.' There was no hesitation and her voice never wavered. She met his eyes, unblinking. Determined. _Huh_? She was lying. He frowned in surprise.

There was a moment of silence before she realized he wasn't buying it and then carried on speaking, her voice hitching as she chose her words carefully. 'Jack admitted later that he'd been lying.'

'But Ben still believes you did it.'

'I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe that's not why we're here.' She glanced up nervously at the camera thing mounted on the wall. OK, so this was a conversation she wasn't really having with him. He could imagine that little bug eyed bastard sitting watching them, drinking it all in.

He leant back against the wall. He was quite sure now that she was lying and she had asked Jack to kill Ben. Interesting. And knowing Jack - yeah, Saint Jack wouldn't kill a guy he was operating on. And then to drop her in it by telling them all... that guy was just plain dumb. Yeah, that would fit. Maybe. Not that he'd stake his life on it or anything, but it looked like she might not be Ben's favorite person right now, and here she was, she'd made her bid, tried to finish off the crazy guy and now she was stuck in here with him... like he was a dangerous murderer or something. It made him wonder what the hell they thought of him. It wasn't exactly flattering for him either.

'Why'd you think I'd kill you?' he asked her suddenly, watching as her head snapped up. She'd been massaging her temples again, and now she squinted like her eyes hurt.

'That's what you do, isn't it?'

'What? Where the hell..?'

She sighed. 'I've read your file, James. Your track record isn't exactly-'

'File? What file? You got a file on me?'

She looked over at the corner of the room again and her mouth set shut.

'You're bluffing.' he muttered. 'You don't know nothin' about me.'

'I know you shot a man in cold blood before you stepped on that plane.' Her voice was steady, icy, penetrating, chilling him. 'I know you spent time in Jail, that you have a daughter you've never seen, I know that when you were eight-'

'OK. Fine. I got it.' He ran his hands through his hair, feeling the panic rising inside him. They knew he'd shot that guy Frank Duckett - how in hell did they know that? Crap. He could feel his head spinning. No one knew that. No one knew what he'd done. No one had been there. She was bluffing. She had to be bluffing. It was just some good guess, some bulls eye fluke or -

'You're bluffing.' he snorted. 'I never killed no one.'

'His name was Frank Duckett.' her eyes never blinked. 'Do you believe me now?'

He froze. Hibbs must have sold him out. That bastard Hibbs had set him up to kill Duckett and then must have told Ben about it. He'd probably put a hit on him as well. He was screwed.

They were both silent for a while, Juliet with her eyes closed, Sawyer desperately going through the possibilities - Hibbs must have given that information to Ben because Hibbs was the only one who knew about Duckett. If he ever got off this Island, he'd kill him. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He could hear Juliet's soft breathing beside him, then the rustle of her clothes as she carefully moved further away. He scrubbed at his face with his hands, feeling the prickle of his beard as he ran his palms over it. Every which way he looked, it didn't look good. Apart from feeling like he was about to die of thirst, he didn't rate his chances. He'd barely escaped with his life the last time they'd captured him. He didn't think he'd be so lucky this time.

This Island sucked.


	48. TêteàTête

Chapter 48

_Tête_-à-_Tête_

Ford was asleep. Or at least he looked like he was sleeping; his head was back against the wall, his breathing steady. She kept a wary eye on him, plunged into her own thoughts for the first time since the sub had exploded and Jack had escaped with the two prisoners and Ben had sent her on a spying mission that had never happened.

She was the prisoner now. For the moment, at least. Until James Ford killed her, because that had to be the plan, right?

The two most dangerous men among the plane crash survivors: James Ford and Sayid Jarrah. At least Sayid had been a soldier and acting under orders, she could dredge up some reasonable excuse for his brutality, but James Ford? His file said it all. He was disturbed, a psycho. Conman. Murderer. Criminal. His parents shot in front of him when he was eight years old and he'd been an unhinged sociopath ever since, macabrely taking on the persona of the conman who'd taken the family money and then carried out a series of copycat crimes until he'd turned into the criminal he'd vowed to kill, even going so far as to take on his name; _Sawyer_. It was pitiful and disturbing and now she was trapped in a room with him. From his file she knew that he was cunning and utterly ruthless. Unstable. And Ben clearly hoped that something would happen and she would end up dead. And while she hated Ben more than she ever thought herself capable, she had to recognize that he was a shrewd judge of character. If he thought James Ford was capable of killing her, then he probably was.

And if not James Ford, then it would be someone else. Ben would keep right on trying. That was his way. If anything, failure only encouraged him. Ben Linus enjoyed a challenge.

She was scared. No, she was beyond scared, this fear was gripping her so deep that it felt like it was strangling her from the inside out.

Sure, she'd been scared before. She'd been scared from the first time she'd come to the Island. From before that, even. She'd been scared at the interview, scared before the interview, scared when she'd been married to Edmund, scared for Rachel. And even when she'd gotten here to the Island she'd been scared every time she went near an operating table and had to watch another of her patients die. She'd have thought that by now she'd have gotten used to being scared.

But when she'd seen Goodwin lying there, the way he'd looked, the surprise on his face even in death - well, it had haunted her. And everything had changed then. That was when this new fear had started, this bone fear that was more like a cold, aching terror, all mixed in with her grief to make her feel like she couldn't stand to be in her own body anymore. This fear felt like it was eating her from the inside out, slowly destroying what was left of her sense of self, her sense of safety, like she couldn't get away from herself far enough to ever be safe again. This one had started when she'd realized what Ben was really like, what he was capable of, what he would do.

It was more than creepy stalker fear - she'd felt a bit of that married to Edmund, but Edmund wouldn't have murdered his way to her. Or, as it turned out, away from her. Nothing like that. And besides, with Edmund there had been Police and the FBI and the Marines and... and here there was... nothing. Just some Kangaroo court that had gathered around her while she'd sat tied to a chair not realizing how close she'd come to being executed.

She'd been as shocked by Danny's death as they'd been. But she'd had no choice. She'd been sure that Ben was going to talk them out of it because she'd only be acting under his orders. If she hadn't shot Danny then Danny would have killed Kate Austin and James Ford and then Jack Shepard would have let Ben die on the operating table - and though she'd wanted the bastard dead she'd wanted to go home even more. She'd wanted to see Rachel again, she'd wanted - well, too much, as it turned out. Besides, whatever else was going on, she couldn't just stand there and watch Danny kill them all. And the way Ford had stood there, unarmed, stepping towards the gun aimed at him, his body shielding Kate as he stood right up there and faced Danny, knowing he hadn't had a chance in hell, and... it had all happened so fast. She'd just aimed and fired and then Danny was dead.

But she'd done it to save Ben. Maybe. Or she'd done it because Danny shooting the two of them was just wrong and she was fed up with WRONG on this Island. But either way, killing Danny had saved Ben's life, and though the Kangaroo court had been disturbing and exposing, and yes, she'd been scared, she hadn't _really _been scared then. Turns out she should have been. It was only afterwards that she'd found out that it was Alex and Jack who'd saved her - Jack who'd threatened Ben _again _and the note that came in and saved her hadn't been Ben's idea at all. They would have executed her. She'd have been dead. And Ben had been going to let it happen. Probably even wanted it to happen. She knew now without a doubt that Ben wanted her dead. Simple. Sending her to look at the crashed plane and then check on the women in the survivors' camp had just been a ploy to get her away. He wanted her dead.

She thought she was going to be sick.

'Do you think someone's gonna come round and give us something to drink?'

The sound of his voice made her jump. He hadn't said anything for a while. She thought he was still asleep. Not that she'd forgotten he was there, but-

She cleared her throat, and looked over at the man next to her. He looked tired but alert. His eyes were on hers and she tried not to flinch. 'They know the effects of the tranquilizer.' she said quietly. 'They know we'll need to drink. I think they're just making us suffer for the sheer hell of it.' She looked pointedly up at the speaker in the wall, glaring at it in case Ben cared to look. She didn't think there was a camera, but with Ben you could never tell, and if he was planning on kill them anyway, why not just let them die of thirst? Ford wasn't on the list. His life was forfeit anyway.

She sighed and leant back further, trying not to let her fear show. She kept one careful eye on James Ford, watching for the slightest flicker of movement that told her he was making his move.

He was still staring at her, examining her like she was some sort of puzzle or exotic creature. He was sitting back against the wall, knees drawn up, elbows resting on them, looking relaxed and completely in control. 'How long you been on the Island?' His tone was light, conversational, and if she hadn't known better she might have relaxed a notch and let him put her at ease. But this was James Ford and she knew his persona was false and almost certainly didn't match his intentions.

She cleared her throat. 'Three years.'

He frowned, obviously surprised by her answer. 'How'd you get here?'

'On a submarine.'

'Huh.'

She hesitated, not knowing whether her silence or her words would make him less likely to kill her. Words, obviously. 'I was head hunted.' she said quietly, wondering if he'd even bother to take the bait and ask her more.

'Head hunted?' he echoed, rolling the words around as if he didn't get what they could possibly mean.

'I'm a doctor. I - they wanted me to work for them. I work with pregnant women.'

His head snapped over at her in surprise.

'I didn't know-' she started, then stopped. Hell, if this was to be her last speech, why hold back? 'I didn't know it was an Island. I thought it was Portland. They told me it was Portland.' And now she felt stupid - and too exposed. She'd gotten so used to hiding everything, speaking in short, coded sentences, that giving this much away felt... wrong. But if James Ford had a good side then, well, the personal details should help, right? He'd be less likely to kill her if she became more of a person to him. 'They drugged me for the journey. When I woke up I was on the Island. I was only supposed to be here six months, but... ' She stopped. Enough. It was enough.

'So now you want to kill Ben because he won't let you leave.' he finished for her, watching her carefully.

'I don't want to kill Ben.'

'But you do want to leave.'

'Yes. I do want to leave.'

He kept watching her. It was unnerving. And he was smart, she knew that. And calculating. And totally self-serving. And charming. And flirtatious. That was what he did. He hit on women for money. He was the ultimate sexual predator, and by all accounts he was very good at it. And now his fake charm was making her more than nervous. He oozed sexual confidence and she didn't like it. Would he rape her first? Was he that sort of guy? When his charm and flirting didn't work on her, would he-

'So where do you think we are?'

She jumped again at the sound of his voice, taking in a quick, anxious breath, then clearing her throat to try and hide her rising panic. She focused on the question, on the facts, on the rational, logical words that were about to come out of her mouth in a steady, calm stream. She could do this. 'I think we're in one of the Dharma Stations.' she kept her voice level.

He looked confused.

'The Dharma Initiative,' she clarified, trying to force herself to calm down, give nothing away. 'They were on the Island in the 60's and 70's - some sort of an experimental commune. They built these stations all over the Island. I- I haven't been in all of them. They're deserted now, except for those that Ben uses.'

Sawyer gave a long, slow sigh, looking up at the speaker in the corner. He didn't look like he was about to jump her, but she'd lived with Ben long enough to know how fast these people could turn. 'So how do we get out?' he glanced up at the speaker in the corner and then turned his head towards her. Of course they both knew it was a rhetorical question because even if she had any idea how to escape from this place she wouldn't be saying it out loud and telling Ben or whoever was monitoring them their escape plans. Not that she had any escape plans. From where she was sitting it looked hopeless.

'I don't know.' she answered.

She watched as he heaved himself up, grunting with the effort it took to move. He stretched uncomfortably, his arms above his head and his shirt rising up to show a band of brown skin. She could see the muscles under them. She looked away. From the edge of her vision she saw him move to the far wall and dragged a box off one of the shelves, open it and peer inside. Another grunt as he pulled something out. He was big, this close up, tall, broad, powerful. She wouldn't stand a chance. She mentally ran through the parts of his body that were still vulnerable - eyes, groin, shins-

'Floor cleaner.' he said, replacing the bottle and pulling out another. 'Glass cleaner.' he moved around the room, pulling out boxes and examining the contents. 'Cloths.' She saw the items as he rummaged through the various boxes.

'So you're a doctor?' he turned to face her, a bottle of cleaning fluid still in his hand. Her gaze swept over the bottle, wondering if he was going to use it as a weapon. She took a deep, slow breath.

'More of a researcher, really.'

He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows at some thought in his head and then turned back to the box he was exploring. 'So what does Ben want with a baby research doctor? You got anything to do with that weird plane?' It was said nonchalantly, but she could hear that his words were loaded.

She trod a little more carefully, wary now. His back was still turned to her. 'What plane?'

'The one with all the body parts in it.' He turned to face her now, his expression had hardened and the fear settled ice cold inside her. This was where he turned. She felt the cold dig a little deeper inside of her. She hesitated, stopping mid thought when she registered what he'd said. _Body Parts?_

'Body parts?What...?'

'There was a plane that crashed on the beach and they said it was Ben's. It was full of cut up pieces of bodies.'

She stared at him for several wide eyed seconds.

'They said it was some bio plane or something.' he kept his eyes fixed on her, intently watching her reaction.

_Body parts? _She sucked in a breath. A plane with body parts? Was Ben that sick? Then her mind went straight back to Goodwin's body and Ben's gloating smile. Suddenly she didn't regret asking Jack to kill him.

Sawyer was still waiting for an answer. He hadn't moved, was still staring at her. She schooled her expression carefully and shook her head, ignoring the headache and the lances of pain running from her eyes stabbing into the back of her skull. 'I was brought here because whenever a woman on this Island fell pregnant she died before she could have the baby. Ben brought me here to fix that. I don't know about anything else.'

His long, slow look told her that he didn't believe her in the slightest and she felt like screaming at him, screaming at all of them, that she didn't deserve this, she didn't want this, she'd only wanted to do GOOD, not get caught here, trapped here, away from her family, from Rachel, from anything that mattered to her, and when she finally found something, someone who could ease it, could reach her, find her, care for her, warm her, that was taken away too and all she had left now were memories of Goodwin's body and she couldn't _do _this anymore. She couldn't.

Sawyer turned away from her before she could say anymore, giving her two precious seconds to get herself under control, steel herself, tuck herself away so that she didn't give Ben the satisfaction of knowing that he'd broken her before she died. He'd broken her a long time ago, but she wasn't going to let him know that.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, before she heard James Ford moving over to her side of the room, snapping her head up and flinching with her whole body as he moved past her toward the door. Her heart was thudding in her chest and she could almost feel the body heat coming off of him as he swung towards her and... Stepped over to the door. He stood there in front of it, his back to her. She let out a long, slow breath. His focus was on the door. Not her. Not her. _Yet_. Maybe she should jump him now, attack him from behind before he could get to her. But then what? If she succeeded Ben would just find another way.

She tracked him as he moved his gaze over the light switch and then to wheel in the center of the door. She watched carefully as he tried the door again. He turned the wheel one way, then the other, pulling and pushing alternately. It didn't budge. Then his hand went back to the light switch and he pushed it down, looking up to the lights as he flipped the switch, both of them expecting to be plunged into darkness. She held her breath. _Darkness_. _Death_. This was it. She tensed, watching as the panel went down with an audible click. The light stayed on, but there was a loud thunk from the door. Sawyer turned to look at her, raising his eyebrows in surprise, then turned his attention back to the door. He slowly spun the wheel, then gave the door a pull. It opened smoothly.

'Damn.' he breathed softly. She was up and standing, breathless, he held his finger to his lips as he turned to her, glancing over to the speakers in the corner, then he nodded once and stepped through the hatch. She hesitated before she followed, pulling the door shut behind her as quietly as she could. She told herself that his focus was on escape, not killing her, and once out of this room she could run, run, run...


	49. Anaconda

Chapter 49

Anaconda

She had expected to find a guard outside the door, but the corridor in front of them was empty. It was narrow, dimly lit by fluorescent lights built into the walls. To her right it ended at another hatch door, so there was no way out there. Sawyer was quickly moving to her left, the lights in the walls making his skin look paler on his arms and face. She followed, not knowing what else to do. At the end of the corridor it branched into another one, just as narrow as the first. She could see ahead where it branched again. Perhaps she should lose him, head off in the opposite direction, get as far away from him as she could, and...

'Do you recognize this hatch?' he turned to hiss at her.

She shook her head and he returned his attention to the space in front of them, muttering something about the _Mother of all Hatches_. The Dharma Stations she'd been in had varied in size, some with long underground corridors like this, but she didn't recognize this one. She only hoped that these corridors led to an exit and not deeper inside the building. She was surprised they hadn't been stopped already. She could imagine Ben sitting in front of a wall of monitors watching their escape, that familiar smug smile playing on his face, waiting for his moment. It was probably only a matter of time before they were attacked and recaptured. In which case it made no sense to get away from Sawyer. She'd be safer if she stuck close to him. At least he'd try to fight for his life - and if he was fighting hard then maybe she'd have a chance to escape in the confusion.

Her head was still pounding, the zigzag of a migraine hovering at the edges of her vision making it hard to focus. She forced herself to concentrate, to memorize their route, get a mental map of this place so that when she had to run she'd at least have some sense of where to go.

Sawyer stopped suddenly and she almost walked straight into his back. She had to pull herself backwards sharply to stop herself from banging into him. He'd gone rigid, his whole body frozen in place, his head locked straight ahead. She felt the cold fear intensify inside of her. She couldn't see anything through his shoulders, but she could imagine Ben or one of the others standing in front of him, a gun aimed at his heart. The bullet would probably go right through him and hit her as well. She took another tiny step back, trying not to squeak in fear. She held her breath. Could they see round him to her? Could she just keep walking backwards and get herself safely back around the corner and then run the other way? The corridor behind them didn't go anywhere, but she could maybe hide in the store room. She was a half second away from doing that, backing up slowly, when Sawyer turned to her.

'This look like Ben's outfit to you?' he asked suddenly. He stepped back, exposing her to the corridor in front of them. She froze, fully expecting a bullet to slam into her, tensing for the pain, but then she realized that there was no one there, only the narrow corridor opening into a larger one, which opened into two more. She stared, wide eyed in surprise. It was like they'd suddenly emerged into a busy intersection in a shopping mall. And there were _people _walking up and down it. Uniforms. Military. And bizarrely, no one was paying them any attention at all. They all looked busy. Efficient. With places to go, things to do. None of them seemed surprised to see her or Sawyer - it wasn't that she and Sawyer were being ignored. These people saw them, they noticed them standing there in the corridor, military eyes flicked over them but then away again as if they were completely unremarkable, standing there watching, out of place in their civilian clothes.

She took a deep, steadying breath and felt a yank as Sawyer grabbed her elbow and pulled her back deeper into the tiny corridor. They both took two, three paces further in until they'd turned the corner and were invisible to the military personnel behind them. She felt a bit like an anaconda or some sort of sea snake emerging from a small dark hole and then retreating when it was faced with the busyness of the open sea. The image was ridiculous and didn't make her laugh.

'Does Ben have a goddamn army now?'

She flushed, pulling her arm away where he was still clutching it too hard. His expression was intense, worried, his face too near hers. She pulled back instinctively, angling away from him. 'No, I - I don't think so. I've never seen - but... I don't know.'

'Cos I know that he enjoys playing dress up.'

She frowned. Of course, Ben had gotten Tom to pretend they were bare-footed savages to try and scare the plane survivors. She hadn't been a part of it, but she'd heard Tom complaining about the how itchy the false beard had been. She could see why Sawyer would think that this was another one of Ben's games.

'We weren't locked in.' It was all she could think of to say, then realized he probably didn't get the significance of this fact. 'Ben probably wanted us to escape.' She felt the sickening dread thicken in her stomach.

'Or we _were_ locked in and Mr Bunny Pacemaker didn't know that the light switch unlocked the door.'

_Mr Bunny Pacemaker?_ She shook herself out of the surreal headache that was still taking over the working part of her mind. She could feel the migraine building, her vision beginning to blur in crazy spikes. Great. This was all she needed, to be incapacitated by some lousy migraine when she was supposed to be thinking straight and saving her life.

'Maybe they're not with Ben.' She said hopefully.

He took a deep breath, sighing out the air to some place over her shoulder. 'There somethin' you ain't tellin' me Blondie?' he asked. 'Cos if you know anything, now would be a good time to share...'

'Maybe they're with those pilots? Maybe they took over one of the hatches.' She heard him grunt and look around some more, obviously thinking.

'Do you think there's a washroom?' She knew it sounded ridiculous but she really needed to drink something. She knew the dangers of not drinking after those tranquilizer darts. They both needed water. Her head needed water.

He looked at her like she was crazy. 'I don't know, why don't we just go out there and ask someone!'

There was a crackling sound and they both startled as a voice filled the corridor. '_Attention all hands, EVA activity on hull. Do not radiate any electrical equipment while EVA is in progress. Thank you._'

He turned to stare at her, his breath coming quicker.

'Are you lost?' The voice made them both freeze in alarm, Juliet took an instinctive step back while Sawyer turned quickly, spinning around to face the figure in the corridor in front of them. Standing right there, blocking any escape, was a pilot dressed the same as one of the prisoners Tom had hauled off the motor boat at Ben's camp.

'You here for the ceremony?' The girl was tall, lean, the uniform impressively neat. She was smiling at them. Juliet hesitantly smiled back. They all waited a beat. Sawyer wasn't saying anything. For some reason she'd expected him to take the lead, to say something first. She glanced over at him. His expression was a picture of shock and confusion. Her own mind was spinning with possibilities - what the hell were these people doing in one of the Dharma Stations? Were they working for Ben? The girl's smile was beginning to fade. Juliet cleared her throat, a quick look at Sawyer confirming that he wasn't going to speak anytime soon.

'Um, we're looking for the restroom.' She wasn't sure why that came out. She could have said all sorts of things - like had they been rescued or, where were they, but she was dying of thirst and she really needed some water.

'Sure.' The girl stepped out into the larger corridor, clearly expecting them to follow her. Sawyer's gaze was still frozen, staring at the girl's face like he'd seen a ghost or something. Juliet nudged him forward, trying to squeeze past him. He reluctantly took a step forward.

'It's just down this corridor here,' the pilot began walking and stopped at the next intersection, 'Just head up there and it's on the right.' Another polite smile, this one with an edge of suspicion. Sawyer was still staring.

'Hey, Boomer, wait up!'

Sawyer almost jumped out of his skin as he spun around, his eyes wide, mouth open. Another girl was almost jogging towards them, dressed in the same complex-looking flying suit.

'Hope you enjoy the ceremony.' The first girl's face was in front of them, still smiling as she nodded a goodbye. Juliet took two steps towards the restroom and then paused, some invisible pull still holding her to Sawyer's unmoving form. She watched as the new girl approached and the two pilots started walking together, their voices fading quickly once their backs were turned. She could just make out a few scraps of their conversation as they disappeared. '_Where's Helo? ... Honor detail. He took Starbuck's place ... Have you seen the XO's face?' A giggle. 'She clocked him right under the eye…' _Their voices faded as they moved away.

Sawyer stood stiff and still, staring after the two women as they disappeared. Juliet shifted awkwardly. She _really_ needed a drink of water. And the restroom was just up there. And no, she didn't get what these people were doing in this Dharma Station, she had no idea if Ben even knew about it now. Maybe the military had found them by the crashed plane and brought them here. But then why leave them in an empty store room? It didn't make sense, but she didn't really care, because if this wasn't Ben's doing then the relief she felt made up for any unanswered questions.

She started walking up the corridor in the direction the girl had indicated, ignoring Sawyer's catatonic state.

There were four cubicles, four sinks and a drinking fountain. She almost sighed in relief as she pushed her mouth around the tiny jet of water, losing herself in the blissful feeling of finally being able to drink something. Of course then she needed to pee. She took the nearest cubicle first, glad that Sawyer hadn't followed so that she could relieve herself without the embarrassment of his presence. She was just about finished when she heard someone else enter the room followed by the bang of the cubicle next to her. She slid out of hers quickly, giving her hands a cursory wash before reacquainting herself with the drinking fountain. She left the tap running in the sink. She did _not_ want to be in here listening to James Ford urinating.

He emerged from one of the cubicles a couple minutes later, still looking shaken, his brow scrunched into a frown. She stepped back to let him reach the drinking fountain, intending to step outside the door and go once he was distracted enough not to grab her and drag her back. But he made no move to go to the fountain, just stood there in front of her, blocking her escape. She felt her breath start to stutter. This washroom looked out of the way and no one else had come in so far and now the door was blocked, and-

'This ain't Ben's crowd,' was all he said.

She stood watching where the door was hidden behind his back.

'It don't add up.' He said thoughtfully, more to himself.

'I recognized the uniform.' She said stiffly, not quite knowing whether all this angst about where they were was a prelude to him attacking her or just the musings of his deranged mind. 'Those pilots on the Island…'

'Yeah.'

'So we've been rescued?'

A voice suddenly blasted through the washroom, echoing around the walls. It flung itself around her head so loudly that she wanted to put her hands over her ears to drown out the noise. '_Attention all hands. At this time Galactica would like to welcome aboard the Secretary of Education, Laura Roslin. The Secretary is a member of the President's cabinet. We're honored by her presence aboard our ship and her participation this afternoon in Galactica's decommissioning ceremony_.'

Then silence.

'Galactica?' she asked uncertainly.

'The aircraft carrier the pilots came from.' He supplied the information without any emotion.

'So we've been rescued?' she felt a surge of hope.

'I don't think so.'

'What – you said this was their ship?'

'Yeah, but it ain't right. This ain't right.'

He was staring at a spot somewhere over her head. She could almost see the thoughts going around his head. His body was still between her and the door. She waited, fully intending to take her chances with the military rather than staying another minute in his company.

'We ain't been rescued,' he murmured. 'Or maybe we have. It just ain't official.'

'What do you mean?' she was feeling uncomfortable now, edgy.

'Looks to me like we got smuggled in.'

She frowned. How on earth did he get to that?

He was nodding half to himself now. 'So. We keep a low profile and wait until we land somewhere.'

'But we're not on the Island, we're on a ship-'

'I guess.'

'I don't understand.'

'These ain't regular military. They're some secret _somethin'_, I don't know, they wouldn't say.'

'If this is a military ship, then why don't we just go to the captain and explain-'

'You don't think it's a little weird that we end up in a store room right out of the way like no one knows we're there?'

She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. He had a point.

'And why drug us if we're being rescued - unless you did that?'

'I didn't drug you. Why would I drug myself?'

He shrugged. 'You woke up before I did. How do I know you was even drugged?'

He was right. She _had_ woken up before him.

He bent down to drink from the fountain. She watched his lips over the water, his body still angled so that it was blocking the door. 'We need to play it smart.'

'I'm sure if we just went to captain and explained ourselves-'

'You want to risk that? What if Ben's with them? If you know more than I do, then fine, go ahead, but I don't know who the hell these people are, and I sure as hell don't trust them.'

She hesitated, watching as he stepped back, given her a pointed look as he made room for her to get by.

'They probably already know we're here.' she argued, stalling because he was right and she didn't know who the hell these people were either. And no, she didn't trust them. She sighed. 'So what's your plan?' She tried to make it sound like she had choices, like she could just walk out of this restroom and save herself, that she wasn't so completely out of her depth that she couldn't deal with this on her own.

He straightened up. 'We lay low, get ourselves back in that storeroom and then we wait.'

'That's some plan.'

'If you got anythin' better, Blondie, then let's hear it.'

She hesitated. She didn't want to go back to being shut in the storeroom with him. He scared her. Though she had to admit that he hadn't actively done anything to make her scared, she just knew too much about him, that was all. 'How do I know you won't try anything?'

He sighed. 'You don't. Same as I don't know you ain't working for Ben and this is all some fancy setup to get me screwed.'

'I'm not working for Ben.'

'Sure you ain't.'

'OK.'

'OK what?'

'Ok, so let's get back to the storeroom.'

'Fine. But a warnin' - don't mess with me, Darlin' and I won't mess with you. We clear?'

'Crystal.' She pushed down the frisson of fear as they left the restroom together. That was the first time he'd threatened her. Not that she was surprised, but she was so tired of being trapped with abusive men.


	50. Faking It

Chapter 50

Faking It

The store room seemed smaller this time around. And more stifling. He'd made a point of leaving the heavy hatch door open a crack - no point inviting trouble by discovering that the little trick with the light switch had been a fluke and closing the door only to discover that they'd locked themselves in. Juliet had given a curt nod of approval when she saw what he was doing and had positioned herself just inside the door, slumped down heavily with her back to the wall.

Neither had said anything since they'd left the restroom; Juliet had taken her spot by the door, closed her eyes and studiously ignored him. Which suited Sawyer just fine. He was done with talking to her and he had a lot to think about.

Like how in hell Hibbs had suddenly entered this little picture and what his relationship was with Ben. And then there was the question of who had brought them here and what the hell was going on with Boomer and Racetrack; the way Boomer's face had miraculously healed and how she and Racetrack had so seamlessly acted as if they'd never seen him in their lives. OK, so it was clear that they must have been working undercover and the blood soaked bandage on Boomer's face had been a prop. After all, he'd never actually seen underneath the bandage, and he had no proof that any of the others at the beach camp had either. Though he'd had the impression that Sun or Rose had helped fix her face up, but looks like she'd managed to dodge that one in a way that had avoided any suspicion.

Neither Boomer nor Racetrack had seemed at all surprised to see him. Their little act had been flawless. He guessed that they must have had something to do with bringing him here. He had no idea why, or even why they'd brought Juliet along with him. He'd gotten on pretty well with both of them, but that didn't mean much. He had no clue whether they were helping him or he was here for some other reason. Maybe he'd gotten too close to that crashed plane. But then why hide them on their ship, free to move around? And where was Kate – what about the rest of the people on the beach camp? What about being rescued? And Charlie - why the hell hadn't they tried to save Charlie? Unless Charlie and Kate and the rest of them were all here too, squirrelled away in this huge ship. Maybe they'd all been rescued, stowed away until they reached another port. Forty of them scattered around the ship in store rooms and closets. Somehow that seemed like a stretch.

He debated whether to get up and go look for them all. Find Kate. Jack. Charlie - but that assumed he was right in thinking that Boomer and Racetrack were on his side. What if they weren't? What if they were connected to Ben after all and Juliet was in on it? He couldn't discount that as a possibility - which brought him right on back to Hibbs and the file they had on him and how they knew he'd shot Frank Duckett. In which case he was screwed.

Either way, sitting here in this store room suddenly didn't seem like such a good idea. Sure, every minute might be taking them further from that goddamn island, but Boomer knew where he was and if the others from the camp were here, then he was going to find them. The first thing was to lose Juliet. She made him uneasy and he didn't trust his back with her within ten feet of it.

She looked like she was sleeping. He stood up and inched around her.

'James?' _Crap_. He stopped and sighed. Not sleeping. 'I need the restroom.' Her voice was hoarse. She looked sick; ashen-faced, sweat beading on her forehead, her eyes scrunched in pain. His eyes narrowed and he took a step back. He could walk off and leave her now, she didn't look like she was in any fit state to go after him. Unless this was all an act - but she looked green. He hesitated. She did look real sick.

'You OK?' he nodded curtly..

'I'm fine, I just-' She took a deep breath and pushed herself unevenly up from the floor, sliding up the wall until she was standing. She was inches away but he made no move to help her, taking another small step back and following her movements as she made her way unsteadily to the hatch door. He still didn't trust her. Pausing briefly at the hatch door to take a few deep breaths, she pulled it open and stepped out into the corridor. He hesitated a moment, then followed her. There was no way he was letting her waltz off to have her little pow-wow with Ben. He kept a couple of paces behind her rather uncertain advance up the tiny corridor to the main thoroughfare andstopped when she did at the busy intersection. It was busier than it had been before- a hell of a lot busier. There was a rush of people all going in the same direction, some in civilian clothes, but most of them military. They all looked relaxed, flowing down the wide corridor like they'd emerged from a movie theater or a church service. A lot of people. This wasn't a good time to go for a stroll. Which, of course, was probably why she was here. He scanned the crowd warily, wondering who she was going to hook up with.

'Hey!' he grabbed her elbow. It was clammy with sweat, even through the sleeve of her cotton shirt. 'Can't this wait?' he hissed at her.

She ignored him, letting her arm pull out of his grip as she stumbled forward, her face set in dogged determination. She made it onto the wider corridor, keeping tight to the wall, pushing against the flow of people. No one paid them any attention, the crowd of faces moved swiftly past them, clocking where they were and then sliding easily around them. Ten yards to the next side corridor and then a short walk to the restrooms off of that. But now she wasn't moving. He wondered if he should grab her arm again and haul her back. No way did he want to risk getting seen by the wrong people. He looked anxiously over at the bobbing heads in front of them. This was a bad idea.

'James?' He barely heard her over the hum of the crowd, 'I think I'm going to…' She held her hand over her mouth, swung her head to one side and then vomited onto the wall beside her, one hand on her knee to support her weight as she bent over. The smell reached him almost immediately, causing him to retch as well. So much for blending in. He'd just about managed to scoot backwards when she threw up again, leaving another trail of bile and vomit down the wall.

'Is everything OK?' Green military, short cropped hair, concerned expression; no one he knew.

'Yeah, yeah, she's fine. I'll just get her to the restroom.' The guy nodded hesitantly and moved away. He had to get her up and moving and out of the main thoroughfare before they were completely screwed. The whole of the ship's crew seemed to be emerging from some corridor ahead of them. Great. The whole crew go to church and come out to discover him here with Juliet barfing up a wall.

'Need any help?' He glanced up to see Boomer's face. He had no clue whether that was a good or a bad thing, but either way he breathed a sigh of relief. He gave her a hopeful, pleading look.

'Hey, Helo! Get your ass over here.' A big guy he'd not seen before edged over to their little spot at the side of the corridor. He was wearing the familiar pilot's uniform and his face was wrinkled with concern. Juliet was slumped over the side of the wall, holding her head in one hand, crouched down as if she were trying very hard not to throw up again. Her hand was shaking.

'Hey, you OK?' Helo bent down so that he was on eye level with her. She just closed her eyes and didn't answer. 'Look, I'll go get some water.' He straightened and Boomer nodded, some unspoken understanding passing between them. Helo trotted away down one of the side corridors while Boomer took Helo's place and crouched next to Juliet. Juliet had withdrawn into herself, taking deep slow breaths. Boomer turned her head towards him. There was an awkward silence where Sawyer searched his mind for something to say.

'She your wife?' asked Boomer quietly.

He stared at her. His wife? What the- of course Boomer knew that Juliet wasn't his goddamn wife. So why the hell was she asking if she was? Unless this was some sort of prompt. OK, so was he supposed to pretend that Juliet was his wife? Damned if he knew. He scanned her face for any clues. She was giving absolutely nothing away, watching him curiously as the silence went on a beat too long. He took a deep breath and nodded once, letting her know he got it. _Fine_. Juliet was his wife.

Boomer turned her focus back on Juliet, putting a supportive hand gently onto her shoulder, making her jump slightly, flinching at the touch. Her eyes were still closed and she was leaning against the wall, narrowly missing the trail of vomit. He grudgingly realized that if he were married to her he wouldn't be standing there like he was allergic to her or that he found staring at her puke anything but endearing. _Sonofabitch_. But Boomer was in the way now, occupying the vomit-free side of the wall, and there wasn't any space for him to do the doting husband act without risking the contents of his own stomach joining hers. Even from where he was standing the smell was making him want to heave.

'Here. Take a sip of this.' A hand was reaching around to pass a glass of water to Boomer who quickly took it and held it to Juliet's lips. She opened her eyes a fraction to take in the glass in front of her, then took a tiny sip, closing her eyes with the effort. He almost felt sorry for her. He just hoped it wasn't some barfing disease she'd already passed onto him. He watched as she brightened a little with the water, but she still looked fifteen shades of green.

'Can you walk?' Helo asked as she took another a slow, hesitant sip, his face a picture of concern. He turned to Sawyer. 'Maybe we should get her to sickbay.'

Sawyer glanced down to Boomer and saw the back of her head nodding in agreement. Fine. Sickbay.

'I'm OK.' croaked Juliet, in a voice that clearly said she wasn't. Even he could see she wasn't, and he didn't even like her. He saw her glance at the line of puke up the wall. 'I'm sorry,' she whispered. 'I'll clear that up.'

'It's fine. Someone'll take care of it.'

'OK?' Helo had one arm under Juliet, looking expectantly over at Sawyer. Boomer had the cup still half full of water. Sawyer bent down and took Juliet's other arm, twisting uncomfortably to avoid the wall. They both hauled her up gently.

'Look, I'm fine, really. I- I just need to lie down for a moment.' Juliet's protests were weak at best.

'Well, there's plenty of beds in sickbay.' Helo straightened, pulling her to her feet.

'I'm fine. Really.' she protested.

'I think we all know that ain't true.' Sawyer chided, trying to remember how to do the act, to pretend that this woman was his be all and end all, the love of his goddamn life. He was out of practice. They took a few hesitant steps.

'It's not far, just up here.' They turned into another corridor. The crowd had thinned and this one was almost empty. The air felt a bit cooler as well. He saw Juliet take a deep, shuddering breath. He hoped she wasn't going to barf again.

'I can walk.' she said stiffly. He let go of her arm and dropped back a little. Helo stayed right there, his arm still under hers. She was walking on her own, but unsteadily. He shook his head at how crazy this was going. Juliet held her hand up to stop, leaning against the wall to take a few deep breaths. Boomer handed her the water and she took another grateful sip.

'Just give me a second.' She closed her eyes and laid her head back, still holding the water, taking small, slow mouthfuls. They all waited.

'You just in from Caprica?' Boomer asked conversationally, breaking the silence. Sawyer stared at her in disbelief. He didn't know where the hell Caprica was, but he didn't see what else he could do but take everything Boomer was saying as a crash course in building his cover. Okaaay. So they were from _Caprica_. _Check_.

'...Because if you're from one of the other colonies, like _Picon_, for example,' she shot a knowing look at Helo, 'Then you can feel a little nauseous with the air and gravity mix till your body gets used to it.'

Helo was shaking his head and smiling. 'This is something only Sharon here can feel,' he said pointedly.

'That's because you're not from Picon. No, really, I felt pretty bad for the first few days when I arrived at Caprica, and the mix on here's the same, so I'm guessing if you're from one of the smaller colonies…'

Now he was confused. Was he supposed to be from a smaller colony or from Caprica? Given that Juliet had just been dramatically sick, smaller colony. So. Scrub _Caprica_ for _Picon_. And what the hell did she mean by air and gravity mix anyway?

'Did you enjoy the ceremony?'

He homed in on her words. Ceremony. 'Um. Yeah.' Then he had to ask. 'Is Charlie here?'

She frowned. 'Charlie?'

Crap. He shouldn't have said anything. There was another awkward silence before Juliet ended the conversation by pushing herself off of the wall and resuming her slow, halting progress. Right. So no talking about anyone else. He stowed his increasing feeling of unease at this whole set up and continued behind Helo and Juliet.

At the end of the corridor was another, more impressive hatch door. 'Sickbay's right here,' Helo helped maneuver Juliet just inside. A nurse came up immediately, taking Juliet by the arm and guiding her to a bed. The place was bigger than he'd expected, more like a small hospital. He scanned the beds. No sign of Charlie. A brief touch on his arm, 'Hope your wife feels better soon,' a nod and a smile and then Boomer and Helo were gone, leaving him still standing by the door. Juliet was over in the far corner already being attended to by what he assumed was a doctor. He was dressed in a white lab coat but he had a cigarette in his mouth, standing quietly while Juliet got settled on the bed. Sawyer took a deep breath and took himself over there, watching the cigarette waggling up and down in his mouth as the doctor started talking.

'That was quite a speech the commander gave.' The doc was saying. He took a draw on his cigarette, pulling it out this time. Juliet grimaced at the smell. 'I remember the last Cylon war. You kids have no idea.' He breathed out a long stream of smoke. Sawyer watched him in fascination. Hell, whatever happened to passive smoking? This guy was a doctor for cryin' out loud…

'Right then, so what's the story?'

'My wife slipped and fell. I tried to catch her, but-' He shrugged, trying not to catch Juliet's appalled stare. He shifted uneasily, hoping that Juliet would have the good sense to play along.

'OK, so let's take a look at you.' He gripped the cigarette in his teeth and began to feel around the back of Juliet's head. Sawyer watched as the ash threatened to spill on her. This was ludicrous. He began to wonder if this guy was really a doctor at all.

'You've got a quite a lump there.' The do called doctor stepped back and turned to Sawyer. 'Looks like your wife may have a concussion.' He turned back to Juliet. 'Do you remember hitting your head, or-'

'Yes,' she said quietly, 'I fell. I must have hit my head as I went down.' Sawyer shifted uncomfortably.

The doctor stubbed out his cigarette and coughed. 'Right then, let's get a better look,' he shone a light into her eyes and felt around her head, more firmly this time. She winced and gave a little yelp as he reached the back of her skull. Given that the lump was at the back of her head, it was fairly obvious she'd fallen over backwards. Or had been pushed. Which of course she had. At least she hadn't said she'd walked into a wall. He was looking too much like an abusive husband already.

'Mmmm,' he hummed. 'That's quite a bump - and you've been vomiting, yeah? Did you pass out?' she cast a quick glance at Sawyer and then nodded. 'Thought so. I don't want to disappoint you folks, but I think you'd better skip the transport back to Caprica. I'd like to keep you in overnight, keep an eye on it, just make sure there's no internal bleeding or anything sinister going on.' He turned to Sawyer, 'I take it you'll want to stay with your wife?' Sawyer nodded. 'OK, so I'll get Ishay here,' he directed a dark haired woman over to them, 'to fix you up with some quarters. I'm sure she can find you a bed round here some place. There'll be plenty of transports on and off Galactica over the next few days – oh, here,' he handed Sawyer a form, 'Insurance compensation. Forms arrived today. You may as well get something back from the accident, eh?' he winked.

Sawyer took the form and smiled, 'Thanks,' he said. He folded the paper carefully and put it in his back pocket. Then he pulled up a chair and sat next to her bed. She was lying back on the pillows half propped up, her eyes tightly closed.

'You don't have to,' she mumbled.

'What? Stay? Sure I do. Gotta look the part, right?'

'Your wife?' She opened one eye and frowned at him, then winced and closed it again.

'Look, I'm sorry, OK?' he said gruffly, 'When I fell, I didn't-'

'It's OK,' she said,

'Why didn't you tell me you was hurt?'

'I'm not. I don't have a concussion, James. I have a migraine, that's all.'

'What about that lump on your head? That ain't no migraine.'

She sighed, 'I get migraines, OK? And this is a migraine. I'm a doctor. I should know.'

'Well, old _Chimney Puff_ there is a doctor too, and he says you got concussion. And he's not barfing everywhere, so I reckon he's the one to know.'

'I just need to sleep it off,' she said, 'I'll be fine.'

'Okay.' He settled back in the chair. This whole thing was getting too weird. Maybe he was dreaming. Yeah, that was it – this was all some tranquilizer induced dream. Maybe if he went to sleep he'd wake up for real.


	51. Zero Hour

Chapter 51

Zero Hour

It wasn't that he trusted her now - he was aware that there was a good chance that she was still just as dangerous- but Boomer's veiled suggestion that he should pretend that Juliet was his wife had given him a small amount of reassurance that she may, in fact, be on his side after all. Not that he was going to bet his life on that or anything, but at least it gave him the excuse to close his eyes for a while. Whatever they'd given him to knock him out had left him feeling like he'd been hit by a truck.

_Rest_. That was all he was going to do. Shut his eyes for a few minutes and take a little rest.

He must have fallen asleep in the chair. He knew that because suddenly he was waking up in it and his neck and back hurt. There was also the sound of a blaring alarm and he was jumping six ways to Friday as it pulled him from deep sleep to high alert in two seconds flat.

'_Action stations action stations, set condition one throughout the ship. This is not a drill._'

He sat up quickly and looked around, the blood thumping in his head. The view was the same as he'd left it. Hospital beds, white covers, gray metal, cabinets, drapes, the same cloying clinical smell that hung around all these places. The same nurse was there too, looking uncertainly at Doc Chimney Puff, who was standing in the middle of the ward, listening, his head cocked to one side. Not that there was anything else to hear but the blaring of the siren and that irritating voice on a loop.

'_Action stations, action stations, set condition one throughout the ship. This is not a drill. Repeat. Action stations, action stations. Set condition one throughout the ship. This is not a drill. Repeat…_'

'Yeah, I got it,' Sawyer muttered, pushing himself up uncomfortably, trying to shake the insistent noise out of his head.

The voice finally stopped, the silence a relief. The Doc was still standing at his listening post as if more information was going to ooze into him through the silence. 'Probably just some prank.' he declared with an air of finality. 'Some Knuckledragger's idea of a good send off.' The nurse gave an uncertain smile and a slight shake of her head.

'Oh well. You know the drill.' The Doc looked around without any enthusiasm, aiming his comment to the empty space and lone nurse.

'What's going on?' Juliet was sitting up in the bed, frowning, her hair tousled from sleep. Sawyer couldn't help noticing that one of the buttons on her shirt had come undone. He could just see the edges of her bra poking out of the side.

He pulled his eyes away and shrugged. 'Some drill.'

'It said it wasn't a drill.'

'Yeah. Well the Doc thinks it is.'

'Oh, and of course he knows everything. I forgot.'

He gave her a withering look. 'You feelin' better?'

'I slept off the migraine. It's gone now.'

He grunted.

'So what now?' She looked pissed.

'How the hell do I know?' He paused, then sighed. 'Plan's the same. Wait 'till we land and then get out of here.'

She nodded, chewing her bottom lip. 'You any nearer to figuring out who these people are?'

'No. Are you?'

She ignored his question, continuing to chew her lip thoughtfully as she looked about her. There were different sounds now. He could hear them. Busy sounds. He guessed the whole 'actions stations' thing had sent the calm looking crew they'd seen earlier scurrying about like little ants. It was less than a minute before more hospital staff arrived, looking breathless and flustered, bursting into the hospital room and flocking straight to the Doc's side. They huddled around them while he gave them monosyllabic directions, then they scattered and started bustling around the place, giving it an air of brisk efficiency.

'No need to panic, folks,' the Doc sauntered over to their bed and chair combination. 'Probably just some joker having a final laugh. Sorry it woke you up. How are you feeling?'

Juliet nodded. 'Better.'

'Good. Still feeling sick?'

She shook her head.

'Vision OK – nothing blurry?'

'No. I'm fine.'

He nodded thoughtfully, then paused as the tannoy beeped again followed by a different voice, deeper and older sounding. '_This is the Commander. Moments ago this ship received word that a Cylon attack against our home worlds is underway. We do not know the size or the disposition or the strength of the enemy forces. But all indications point to a massive assault against Colonial defenses. Admiral Nagala has taken personal command of the fleet aboard the Battlestar Atlantia, following complete destruction of Picon Fleet Headquarters in the first wave of the attacks. How, why, doesn't really matter now. What does matter is that, as of this moment, we are at war. You've trained for this. You're ready for this. Stand to your duties, Trust your fellow shipmates and we'll all get through this. Further updates as we get them. Thank you_.'

There was a chilled silence. Sawyer looked up at the Doc. His face was frozen.

Sawyer frowned. As he looked round the hospital ward he could see the shocked faces of the nursing staff. No one moved. All eyes were on the Doc, standing statue still in front of them. Sawyer watched it all curiously. He didn't feel part of this, and the speech that had just come over the tannoy confirmed that these people weren't regular military at all. '_Picon Fleet Headquarters_' and '_Colonial defenses_' meant nothing to him. And the phrase _Home Worlds_ seemed a little extreme. And in spite of the assertions of the pilots he'd met on the Island, he'd never heard the word '_Cylon'_ before. The only thing he could think of was that this was some gang war, and yeah, _Home Worlds_ did sound like it was some sort of slang for their turf. It looked increasingly as if he'd stumbled into the middle of a drug cartel.

Great. So now Ben was some drug baron and he'd just found himself in the middle of a war. Not good. He sighed. It all fit now. All that irrational, mindless violence from Ben's side of the Island. He didn't understand why he hadn't seen it before. And drug wars were vicious. Ben was probably using the Island as some sort of base. Which would explain his aggressive behavior towards the crash survivors.

Now that he saw it, it was so obvious. He should have guessed before.

The sheer size of the ship told him that this was a huge operation with a shit load of money behind it. This crowd were playing to high stakes and that alone made him nervous. He still wasn't clear about his part in it all or why he'd been drugged and brought here in the first place, but it was getting more and more likely that he wasn't here because Boomer and Racetrack had suddenly decided to try and rescue him. At least he didn't think so. Or maybe they had tried to save him – it sounded like Ben was as much their enemy, which put him and Boomer firmly on the same side. That was a good thing. Especially as he'd followed Boomer's advice to bring Juliet to this hospital room. It would be good if it wasn't a trap.

And Juliet?

Juliet was silent on the bed. Her eyes were wide and she was watching the hospital staff scurrying around getting stretchers, beds and piles of bandages ready. She wasn't giving the impression that she knew what the hell was going on any more than he did. Sawyer frowned in frustration. It didn't add up. All he knew was that he was probably in the middle of a gang war and the nurses were arranging a lot of bandages into neat piles. He moved uneasily in the chair.

After a couple minutes the frenetic movement died down. Sawyer watched as Ishay nodded to the Doc. He was standing in the middle of the room, nodding approval. 'Well folks, I guess we're ready.' He sauntered over to Juliet and Sawyer. 'You're best off here,' he said. 'If it gets busy I'll send you packing, but for the moment this is probably the safest place on this ship.'

Sawyer swallowed hard. For some inexplicable reason he still felt more detached and curious than afraid, like this wasn't his fight and he wasn't really part of it. Which was dumb, because, of course, he was right in the middle. He didn't say anything though, and the Doc turned away without waiting for a reply. There followed a tense silence, all the hospital staff were on alert, waiting. No one spoke.

A beep from the intercom made him jump. He recognized the voice of the Commander again. It began with no preamble:

'_Preliminary reports indicate a thermonuclear device in the 50 megaton range was detonated over Caprica city 30 minutes ago. Nuclear detonations have been reported on the planets Picon, Sagittarius and Gemenon. No reports of casualties but they will be high. Mourn the dead later. Right now the best thing we can do is get this ship into the fight.'_

_Planets_? That was the word that stuck in his mind. After the bit about the size of the nuke. The _planets_ Picon, Sagittarius and Gemenon. Then he remembered Boomer talking about Picon and gravity mixes.

This was all some elaborate hoax.

_Crap_.

He could almost see Ben sauntering into the room, that familiar little sneering laugh on the bug-eyed bastard's face. This was the sort of thing Ben would do, the same kind of elaborate twisted mind game that he'd played when they'd been captured the last time. And yeah, it had worked. It had gotten him confused and disoriented. Just like it was supposed to.

Sawyer replayed the events of the last few hours; Juliet in the store room. Boomer and Racetrack conveniently bumping into him. Juliet's sterling - and rather disgusting - vomiting performance. Boomer directing them here to sickbay talking about planets and gravity mixes on the way. Tiny little hints that he'd let slide. So this was some huge and improbable charade – a massive piece of theater - though when he thought about it more carefully he realized that there were very few players involved. Just Boomer and Racetrack and the strange chain-smoking doctor and one nurse. Plus a few more extras who'd just turned up in the last few minutes.

He'd never been convinced by the Doctor. Ben was no doubt laughing enough to pee his pants.

And the point was...? He guessed that the point was to show what sort of muscle Ben had at his disposal. From what he'd seen of him, it was clear that Ben wasn't a guy who liked losing. And he liked playing games to show how clever he was. And the dressing up - yeah, he'd covered that one already.

He guessed it wouldn't be long until Ben appeared and he was recaptured and had to put his life on the line again to attempt an escape. Ben was probably pissed that he'd been out maneuvered by Jack enough to let him and Kate go. At least Kate wasn't with him. They had less leverage when she wasn't around. She was a weakness. He cared too much and they knew it.

Of course it was getting quite obvious now that Juliet was either in on it or being hoodwinked by Ben because, like she'd said, she really had fallen out of favor. Or maybe she was still working for him but he liked his actors to have the freshness of not knowing what the hell was going on so he'd kept her purposefully in the dark. Either way the act had gone far enough. Time to call this one out.

He was about to stand up and say something when he felt a tug at his sleeve. The Doc started speaking at the same time. He frowned and waited, curious about what he was going to say. The Doc raised his voice and directed it round the room, 'This is a shock for all of us, but we need to stay calm.' He could feel the tension oozing from everyone in the room. Sawyer rolled his eyes. He should tell them they could drop the act now. Ben had made his point. He was a very clever and a very funny guy. Now why don't they just get right on back to the torture and the killing and get it over with…

'James?' Juliet was still tugging on his shirt, her voice a desperate whisper. 'They're talking about nukes-'

He stared down at her in exasperation. 'Oh c'mon, Blondie, I ain't that dumb.'

She looked genuinely confused. And scared. Kind of white and terrified-looking. Maybe she wasn't in on it. Either that or he should start clapping now, she was that good.

He sighed. 'It ain't real.'

She stared at him, wide-eyed. 'But they're talking about _nukes_, James.' She hissed back, 'What if the States-'

He shook his head, 'I never even heard of any of those places, have you?'

She frowned.

'My Geography ain't that bad. He's talking about dropping massive nukes on places we've never heard of.'

She looked confused. 'But they're talking about a nuclear bomb-'

He gave an exasperated huff. 'Yeah. Right. And the _planet_ Picon is the target. Or maybe it's just a problem with the _gravity mix._ Funny. You think I'm that dumb? Why don't you just drop the act now, it's getting old.' He raised his eyebrows at her.

She frowned back at him and turned slowly to take in the rest of the hospital. 'So you think this isn't real?'

He gave a snort. 'That just depends on how high you wanna fly, don't it?' he drawled. 'You wanna trip out on all this stuff, then go right ahead. I'm sure Ben's shittin' himself laughin.'

'_Attention! Inbound Dradis contact, rated highly probable enemy fighter. All hands stand by for battle maneuvers.'_

'Here they come,' the Doc muttered. 'They didn't give us much time.'

Sawyer sat back in the chair, shaking his head. It was a bit like being on a movie set. The only thing missing was the director and the cameras – though of course they were there, just hidden. He felt like giving Ben a little wave and a smile.

The boop of the PA made him look up, _'Inbound enemy contact bearing 247 range 115 closing.'_

The Doctor waved over at Juliet and James,

'I'd hang onto something solid,' he said.

Sawyer was getting off the chair when the impact hit him. He was thrown hard against Juliet's bed, knocking into her so that she tumbled onto the floor yelping in pain. He grunted as he rolled over and landed on the floor next to her. There was the sound of crashing, glass breaking, another huge jolt that slammed both of them into the cabinet behind the bed. He felt the breath leave his body as he fell onto her, and he tried to twist his shoulders so that he didn't crush her under his momentum, wincing as he heard her head connect with bottom of the cabinet. He really wasn't doing this on purpose. Another wrench threw him back off of her, pushing him roughly against the legs of the bed. Then everything went still and eerily quiet. He could just about hear Juliet's staggered breathing.

'They've got nukes.' He heard the Doc's irritated voice punctuating the silence.


	52. Doctors and Nurses

Chapter 52

Doctors and Nurses

Juliet opened her eyes to the sight of bed legs and broken glass and the sounds of people scrambling to their feet. 'Alright folks, looks like we're going to get some wounded down here real soon. Let's get this place cleaned up.' The Doc's voice was confident, upbeat. She peered up to see his gray haired silhouette moving through her line of vision, still half obscured by the corner of the bed from where she lay on the floor. She took in the scene from this new angle; legs moving quickly, heads and hair coming into view as nurses bent to pick piles of bandages and blankets off of the floor. She noticed with surprise that her bed had been screwed down - a tough looking metal plate attaching it firmly in place. That would make sense if they were on a ship, she guessed.

She heard herself groan as she tried to move, her body aching and bruised. James Ford had fallen onto her. Again. She could already feel the sting of bruises all down her left side and the aching intensifying in her head. She must have banged her head again.

She pushed herself up so that she was sitting with her back against the cabinet. She didn't trust herself to stand up quite yet.

She glanced over to find Sawyer sitting a little way away from her, examining a cut on his arm. It didn't look deep but it was bleeding; she could see the red streaks running down his arm. He frowned as he pulled out a small shard of glass, wincing as he tossed it back onto the floor next to him, then he grabbed a fallen bandage pad from the floor next to him and held it onto the cut.

'You OK?' she asked him quietly.

He grunted.

She sighed and turned her attention back to the rest of the room. The place was nearly destroyed. There were trolleys lying tipped on their sides, blankets and bandages strewn all over the floor, broken glass everywhere. She could see the quick movements of the nurses as they tried to clear it all up. 'You still think all this is fake?' she asked him incredulously.

He hesitated, glaring at her like it was her fault or something, or as if she was teasing him somehow. 'You got any better ideas?' He was giving her that look again - the one that said he knew that _she_ knew what the hell was going on. But she didn't. She really didn't. She probably had less of an idea than he had. She'd always been so stupidly naive. The fact that she'd even ended up on the Island in the first place was testament to that. She didn't answer him, but looked away, keeping her gaze steadily fixed on the movement in front of them.

It didn't take long for the nursing staff to finish clearing up the mess. It all happened surprisingly quickly; in only a few minutes the floor was clear, the bandages neatly stacked and the trolleys upright. She supposed it was designed to do that – ships rolled around in the sea and made everything fall over. Maybe they were just used to putting it all back together again. She pushed herself roughly to her feet, hissing in pain as she straightened up. The left side of her body felt stiff and stretched, making it hard to breath.

'You OK?' Sawyer asked gruffly.

She rubbed the back of her head with her hand. She could feel another lump right next to the first one. 'You fell on me again.' she said pointedly.

'You hurt?'

She searched his face. His concern looked genuine enough. 'No. I'm fine.'

He was frowning at her like he didn't believe her. Maybe he assumed that everything that came out of her mouth was automatically a lie. She felt another ripple of fear. She hadn't forgotten who he was and the fact that wherever or whatever this place was, it probably wasn't good. Sawyer was still dabbing the cut on his upper arm, checking that the bleeding had stopped before putting the bandage pad on the bedside cabinet. There was a fair amount of blood, but the wound looked clean. It was more a scrape than a deep wound. She turned her eyes away from his arm and up to his face. She could see he wasn't happy, his eyes were flitting around the room and he was chewing on his lip, thinking hard.

'Do you think the ship is being attacked?' she asked tentatively. She remembered the plane that had sunk the submarine, the sight and smell of it being blasted into nothing. She shuddered. She didn't know how big this ship was, but she hoped it was huge.

'If we're even on a ship.' He said cryptically. That caught her attention. He still thought this was one of the Dharma Stations?

'You think we're still on the Island?' she asked incredulously.

'Maybe.' He gritted his teeth hard. She could see his jaw muscles working.

She didn't see how that would fit. For a start, the beds were screwed to the floor, and those pilots had said that Galactica was a ship, so… she froze as a sudden hissing filled the space around them, like the brakes being let off a bus. There were several loud clunks and the room jolted again, the lights flickered before everything went still.

'_Oh_ _frak_,' she heard the Doc cursing under his breath. She squinted up to see him frowning in the half light. 'We're on lockdown.' he muttered more loudly. His words were met by silence. 'Let's hope to frak they can sort this one out.' She felt a ripple of fear move through everyone in the room.

'Lockdown? _Sonofabitch.'_ Sawyer's growl pulled her attention to where his face was set in panic. 'That means we're trapped?' He strode toward the hatch door, pulling on it roughly as he tried to make it open. He stayed firmly shut. She stood up straighter, holding onto the table to watch as he rattled the door angrily. 'So we're locked in now. Prisoners.' He swung around to face the Doc, his back to the door.

The Doctor stood facing him. He was looking uncomfortable. 'Not prisoners, the way this is looking we'll be the survivors.' There was a sob from somewhere across the room. One of the nurses was crying, her hands over her mouth and tears welling in her eyes.

The Doc opened his mouth to say something else and then hesitated, bending over to straighten a chair that had toppled onto the floor. 'Look, we're cut off from the rest of the ship and that means that Galactica is in big trouble.' He paused, and straightened reading Sawyer's expression, flicking his glance over to where she was standing by the bed. 'Sickbay's a disaster station – if Galactica goes down all this turns into an escape pod. We've just been isolated from the rest of the ship, so either someone from CIC thinks there's a risk of the ship going down or one of the automated systems just kicked in. Right now, you're in the safest place on this ship.' He turned away, raising his voice to the rest of the room. 'Alright, let's not panic folks. It ain't over yet.'

Sawyer shook his head, stalking menacingly towards the Doctor. Juliet held her breath. Sawyer was going to get himself killed. But then that had been his style. Rattling things around when he didn't understand them. She'd seen him do it when they'd captured him, getting himself nearly killed to probe their weaknesses. It was brave but stupid.

'Hey. No. Uh uh. You ain't doin' this.' Sawyer was shaking his head.

'Excuse me?' The Doc held his ground, steadfastly meeting Sawyer's threatening stare.

'Why don't you just tell me about the gravity mix on Picon, huh? Or let's hear some more about the _planet_ Picon?'

The Doc turned back to him. 'Look, I know it's been a shock, but you need to stay calm, OK.'

'Alright,' he was shouting at the walls now, tossing his hair to one side. 'This is funny and all, but why don't we drop the act? This is getting old.'

His words were met by stunned silence. The nursing staff were standing stock still, watching him. None of them moved. The one on the other side of the room was still crying quietly.

'And what was the other planet, oh yes, Sagittaron. What's the gravity mix like on there?' Sawyer was flinging his arms around now, his hair flicking across his face, leaning forward in exasperation.

The Doctor sighed dramatically. 'Look son, I don't like it any more than you, but you're going to have to calm down because this isn't helping any.'

Sawyer opened his mouth to say something more when there was another loud clunk from the door. The room jolted again, harder this time, Juliet had to hold onto the bed to keep her balance.

Sawyer shook his head and went over to the hatch door, spinning the wheel and pulling the door open quickly. He almost fell backwards as he was immediately hit by a wall of sound. Screaming, shouting, yelling. He took a quick step back, his expression one of horror, frozen to the spot. And then she smelled it, smoke, the smell of burning. Sawyer was already being pushed aside as a stretcher was carried quickly into the room. She could barely make out that it was a man, the right side of his face burnt black. She stifled a cry, her hand flying to her mouth. She watched as the Doc strode towards the stretcher, then turned quickly towards the sinks in the far corner. 'Get him on the table,' he threw the words over his shoulder, already getting gowned up and scrubbing his hands quickly. She stood frozen as more wounded were brought in, the nursing staff quickly assigning beds. Ishay was directing where to put them. Most had been burned, but she saw huge gashes and red, bleeding wounds on many of them.

There didn't seem to be any end to the wounded. It was like watching some huge disaster unfolding in front of her. She stared at the door, at the edge of the corridor behind it, at the queue of wounded still there, coughing and groaning and bleeding. She doused her rising panic. She caught Sawyer's shocked face as he stood staring at the sight before him. He looked up and met her eyes briefly before turning back to take in what was happening in the rest of the room. It was all happening so fast. From silence to the screaming, stillness to frenetic, desperate action. Juliet held onto the bed beside her, gripping the covers tight.

'I'm sorry, but you need to go-' Ishay was standing in front of her, looking pointedly at the bed. Juliet pulled her hand away quickly and nodded, automatically searching to find Sawyer again. This time he'd gone. There was no sign of him. She stood back as Ishay helped heave another broken body onto the bed. She could see blood seeping from a large gash on the girl's arms, and more blood oozing from somewhere in her chest. Her face was tinged red, scalded but not so badly burned. Juliet swallowed hard, looking over to where the Doctor was still bent over the first body. She quickly scanned the room. She couldn't see any more doctors. Ishay was busy trying to calm the girl, looking anxiously over to where the Doctor was still busy trying to save his first patient. She heard Ishay swear quietly. Juliet could see what she was thinking. This girl was going to bleed out.

'She needs help now.' Juliet said firmly. 'I'm a doctor,' she added, meeting Ishay's surprised stare as steadily as she could.

This had already been her worst nightmare, but now... She held her breath and tried not to scream in fear.

Ishay looked curiously at her and then gestured for her to follow, standing at the Doc's shoulder as he bent over the body in front of him. Ishay caught his eye and he turned with a look of surprise. 'She says she's a doctor.' Ishay nodded over at Juliet.

She stepped forward nervously. 'Well, I'm a fertility specialist, mainly research, but-'

'You done your ER rotations?' he cut her off.

'Yes. It was a while ago, but-'

'Fine,' the Doc grunted, 'Get gowned up, go pick a patient and fix 'em.'

She took a deep breath and nodded, moving numbly to the sinks at the side of the room. She scrubbed up, got the gown and mask on and within two minutes was standing over the young woman again. She can't have been more than twenty. She looked so young. Juliet tamped down the fear. She hated surgery. She'd hated her ER rotations. It was what had pushed her into Obs and Gyne. She tried to stop her hands from shaking.

The girl died. Quickly and suddenly. Her heart stopped and that was that. Juliet sucked in a breath and stood back, shocked. She stumbled back to the sink, washing the blood off her hands, scanning her memory of the operation. She'd missed something. Too much blood and she hadn't sealed the wounds in time. She took three steadying breaths before turning back to face the room. Ishay was there with another patient. More burns. Male. Too young. Not much more than a boy.

She tried to hold herself together as she went through the queue of bleeding, groaning, charred figures, their bodies still full of smoke and choking fumes. Her whole world was completely filled up with hospital gowns and bleeding, dying young people. And yes, they were dying. Really dying. Whatever made Sawyer suggest that this was an illusion? She only wished it was.

As soon as one bleeding, burning body was stabilized or died in front of her, she moved across to another, slowly working her way around the room as all the beds filled up with bleeding, moaning, unconscious, dying people. And it was a lottery whether they survived or not. She felt sorry for the ones that ended up under her care. But there was nothing she could do but try and steady herself and keep going, keep watching them live or die, do her best to save them, feeling her skills stretched beyond the edges of her inadequacy.

'Give him some pain relief!' The Doc was yelling, cursing, struggling as the body under him went into spasmic convulsions. Ishay's face was pinched, concentrating on the body in front of them. Juliet tore her eyes from the drama on the other operating table. She just wished she knew what the hell she was doing. She wasn't a surgeon and some of these wounds were… well, she wasn't a surgeon.

She took a deep breath before she concentrated again on the girl in front of her. The beds were all filled now and she'd started making her way down the queue that was still filling the corridor. Thank god this one wasn't going to die. The head wound was deep, bleeding profusely, but she knew that providing she stitched it up the girl would live. She could save her. This one wasn't going to die. She shut her eyes for a moment to steady herself. The migraine was still floating around at the edges of her mind, threatening to come back forcefully. She hadn't eaten or drunk anything since that water in the rest room hours ago. And there were so many of them. So many. At least the burns cases had stopped. Three of those had died, their burns so bad that she'd almost been relieved when their vital signs had faded to nothing. Almost. In a numbed, horrified way. And now it was only those who had been injured in the blast. Cuts, bruises, minor injuries.

'_Attention all hands, hyper light jump in…..ten, nine...'_

'Oh great.' She recognized the Doc's voice from the room behind her. 'That's all we need.'

Juliet looked over in surprise. Was this another attack? She finished tying off the last stich in the girl's head, pulling out a bandage ready to wrap around the wound.

'_...two, one…' _

She squeezed her eyes shut.

'_Jumping_.'

Juliet's guts did a flip as her whole body turned itself inside out. Then she staggered and blinked, opening her eyes to try and steady herself. She gave a cry of surprise as she scanned the space in front of her. She wasn't in the corridor anymore, and the girl in front of her had gone. She blinked again, looking around anxiously.

'What the?-' Sawyer was standing next to her. She hadn't seen him since that first patient, the girl, the first one who died. She squeezed her eyes tighter shut as a wave of dizziness hit her. She felt him grab her arm as she swayed towards him, staring up in surprise when her body bumped against his. She winced as the bruises down her side flared to life and met his gaze with a glare. His eyes were locked on her theater gown, taking note of the mask around her neck, then back where the front of her gown was spattered with blood. He frowned before he spun his eyes away from her, staring intently at something over his left shoulder. She turned to look: a bath tub, a woman inside it, black tubes snaking out of the water.

_Where the hell were they?_ The panic began to rise to her throat.

'You see that too?' Sawyer was hissing at her insistently.

She stared at the woman in the water, her hair covered by a black swimming hat. She was speaking.

'_Adjust temperature by 0.1 of a degree. Pressure on hull decreasing by 3.2 microns. Adjusting decompression units to compensate._

_Progress reports arriving. _

_The farms of Aerolon are burning. _

_The beaches of Canceron are burning. _

_The plains of Leonis are burning. _

_The jungles of Scorpia are burning. _

_The pastures of Tauron are burning. _

_The harbors of Picon are burning. _

_The cities of Caprica are burning. _

_The oceans of Aquaria are burning. _

_The courthouses of Libran are burning. _

_The forests of Virgon are burning. _

_The Colonies of Man lie trampled at our feet.'_

She stared, mesmerized by what the woman was saying. Sawyer hadn't moved.

'_The flower will open, its petals wide to the sun._

_Where will the children run to hide?_

_Find it. Find it. End of line._'

A flash of color out of the corner of her eye made her turn quickly, her eyes opening wide in horror. Across the room, standing completely still, was a tall blond woman. She was dressed in some sort of evening wear, showing off her curves in a tight, black, slinky dress. The woman was staring with an expression of shocked surprise, her eyes flicked to Sawyer and then to Juliet, pausing as she took in the blood spattered clothing. Their eyes locked and the woman inclined her head slightly, as if she was figuring something out. Then she made a small gesture, a flick of her left wrist, her eyes still trained on hers. Juliet's eyes were held, but then she saw movement behind the woman's shoulder and watched in horror as a huge metal _thing_ emerged from the shadows. It walked like some parody of a human being, clunking loudly with each step, gleaming silver. It was a huge silver monster, at least seven feet tall, with arms and legs. She couldn't take her eyes off it. Its movements alone were terrifying. It clanked as it walked, but it moved with a frightening grace, like an athlete. She was sure it could run. It came to stand beside the blond woman. The woman stood there, her shoulder nearly touching it, completely unafraid. It stood a little way behind her. Like it was her pet or something. Juliet could almost sense it waiting for her orders.

Silence. Then a movement from the woman in the tub and a shout.

'JUMP!'


	53. Pinball

Chapter 53

Pinball

This time the storeroom was a closet. A tiny closet with half the floor space taken up by an old broom and a battered looking mop and bucket. He turned to find Juliet squeezed into the small space beside him. She was still wearing the doctor outfit, the one with the blood stains down the front and the theater mask around her neck. She looked as if she was about to vomit again. He automatically changed his angle, shifting his shoulder so that he wasn't right in front of her face. She was taking deep calming breaths and staring somewhere past his the left side of his chest.

'That silver thing,' she was almost hyperventilating, 'What was that? Did you see that? – and the girl and the water, and the tubes coming out…' her voice faded to nothing and she swallowed hard.

Ah. Yeah. The girl in the tub. His dream girl. And the blonde bombshell with the metal robot.

So she'd seen that too? She wasn't supposed to see that, that was _his _dream.

OK, now this was too weird.

'James, I- ' she went silent, staring around the small space in a panic. 'How did we get in here? I was stitching up a head wound, then…' she looked down at her hands. He followed her gaze. She was wearing white latex gloves with more blood on them. He frowned. Was all that blood normal?

He hesitated. 'So, it's for real – the sick people?'

She gave him an incredulous look. 'Yes. There's people dying in there, James.' Her voice almost broke, 'I've lost four already.' Her eyes glazed over and she looked into the distance, caught up in some internal scene playing in her mind.

'Hey,' he caught her arm, 'You OK?'

She gave a tight laugh, 'No James. No, I'm not OK.' She took a deep breath. 'I need to get back,' she said quietly. 'It's busy.' She made to push past him. He didn't move.

'Ain't you wonderin' how we even got in here?'

She took another ragged breath, her eyes flitting around the space, shaking her head imperceptibly. It looked like she was barely holding herself together. She sighed and sagged in defeat. 'I guess they must have drugged us again.'

'So why weren't we knocked out?'

She frowned. 'I don't know, maybe they used a different drug, or we were unconscious but we don't remember it, or-' She took another deep breath. 'That... place, it must have been some sort of hallucination, and now we're here, and-'

'But if they drugged us both, then how comes we're seeing the same thing?'

'I don't know.' She said in a very small voice.

'Unless we're still drugged...' he said half to himself. 'Huh.' He grunted, then paused. 'Maybe we've been drugged all the time. Maybe this closet ain't real. Maybe none of this is real.' He had a sudden, clear image of finding Karl in that room on the other Island, strapped in that chair wearing those weird glasses with that huge screen blasting sound and pictures at him. _Bug-Eyed_ Ben liked messing with people's heads. Something clicked. Okaaaay. Suddenly it all became sickeningly clear.

_Sonofabitch._

Sawyer was there, on that Island, in that room being pumped full of drugs and crazy images. Now _that _made sense - the metal robot thing had been the giveaway. That and the whole Picon planet gravity mix bathtub. Yeah. That fit. He had to be in some semi-conscious waking drug induced hallucination.

_Bastard._

Which meant that none of this was really happening.

'James?'

He looked down at her. 'You ain't real.' he said to her. And yeah, the words rang even truer when he heard them; the doctor outfit, the excessive amount of blood, the general weirdness of it all, being thrown from one crazy scene to another... It all had that surreal quality about it. It was all a goddamn dream. _That _made sense. It was the only thing that did. And now that he thought about it, he could see how all the things he had experienced since he'd met Juliet at the crashed plane could have been pulled out of his subconscious and arranged into this elaborate fantasy. Like the woman in the bathtub with the tubes coming out of it - Boomer and Racetrack had talked about body parts and experiments, and hell, he'd seen the insides of that plane, the one Starbuck had been pulled out of.

And then there was this ship - Galactica - well of course that would play a big part, seeing as he'd been counting on being rescued by it - and even being attacked, that would fit too. He'd just seen that plane on the Island bomb that boat. And then all the references to planets and gravity mixes, and then the crazy robot. He could lay that one squarely at Hurley's door- that'd been Hurley's jokes about all of this being so sci fi. That was his fault. _Thanks, Hurley._ Then there was the lockdown - OK, so his time in prison wasn't something he wanted to revisit, but being locked up still pushed his buttons. So yeah, all the ingredients were there, it was just up to his mind to make them into the creative crazy picture that he was currently enjoying. Which meant that Juliet here wasn't really here. And nor was he.

Yeah, he was in the middle of some nightmare drug-induced trip. He guessed the best thing would be to sit it out, wait for the drug to wear off. And this closet was probably as good a place as any. Except that Juliet chose that moment to try and open the door. He closed it on her, ignoring her startled yelp of surprise. He frowned at her, examining her more closely. Why her? Why not Kate? It would have been much nicer to have done all this with Kate. She'd have looked good in that doctor's outfit. Maybe with a little less of the blood…

'Look. I need to go.' Juliet pushed past him, forcing the door open. He stepped awkwardly to the side as she squeezed through the gap he'd left, letting the door close behind her, the bright light from the corridor fading to the iridescent glow from the dull light on the closet ceiling. He thought about going after her, but then hesitated. He didn't need to stick close to her anymore, besides, she'd gone. Her hallucination self clearly didn't want to be stuck in a small space with him.

The closet was cramped and the air was thick with something that smelled like bleach, but he turned the bucket upside down and sat on it, leaning up against the one bare wall and trying to shut everything else out, closing his eyes to try and make himself drift off. He could hear noises from the other side of the door – faint sounds of people shouting and kids crying.

Ben was probably around, somewhere, watching his real body. That wasn't so good. Because once Ben had done his mind control thing he'd probably try and kill him again. But Ben was the sort of sick bastard who would want at least a few minutes to gloat over how much he'd messed him around. So Sawyer was pretty sure that eventually he'd wake up and have _that_ conversation with buy-eyed himself. Before he was killed. But until he came to in the real world there was very little he could do about it.

He swore softly. The closet was too cramped, he was too shut in. And it was boring. _Dammit_. He may as well be entertained by what his mind was creating for him, go see what his subconscious had created now. Take a stroll through his own mind. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do – or if anything could happen to him here anyway. His real body was probably strapped down to some chair in that room where they'd found Karl.

He shook his head and opened the closet door. Another corridor. But the sounds of people were louder now, kids, shouting, crying, moaning, coughing, and right there ahead of him a huge space - like the hanger deck on an airplane. It was crowded; there were people everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of them, packed together. It smelled of urine and vomit and excrement and people. Too many people. Perhaps not so entertaining.

'This ain't real.' he muttered to himself, standing on the edge of the hangar space and staring out at the people in front of him. He took a slow step forward. There had to be hundreds of people here. Men, women, little kids. They all carried the same shocked and stunned expressions on their faces. He recognized that look – the look that all the survivors of flight 815 had had when their plane had first crashed and they'd all sat on the beach waiting for a rescue that had never come.

OK, so _that_ was the part of him expressing itself right now. Not a memory he particularly wanted to revisit, but he didn't seem to have much of a choice here. He peered around nervously, then shook himself. OK, this was _his _nightmare, his hallucination, his fears. He'd just multiplied the scene of the crash and here he was. Hungry and thirsty and surrounded by shocked people - just like on the beach. Only here there were more people. A lot more people. He quickly scanned the crowd. So far no metal robots or weird aliens. And no sign of Juliet either. He could smell food though. His stomach started grumbling. He was hungry. He scanned the space, trying to find the source of the food smell. There, over on the other side of the hangar, he could see a table and someone handing out bowls of soup. He hadn't eaten in so long - well, of course he didn't _need_ to eat, his dream-self didn't need to eat. Maybe he was hungry in real life and it had filtered down to this dream. _Whatever_. The food was there, he may as well get some.

This was weird - the extra awareness of the dream, like he was walking inside his own head and getting a chance to see his mind from the inside out.. Interesting and weird.

He walked around the edges of the space, having to pick his way over the feet and legs of those who were leaning against the walls. He made it quickly to the table and stood in the line, watching as a dollop of something was ladled into makeshift bowls. OK, they weren't bowls, they were empty food cartons, packaging, an odd assortment of makeshift utensils and throwaway cups being filled with water. He took his turn, held onto the messy plate of goo that was thrust into his hands, took the drink offered to him and went to find a place to sit and eat.

There wasn't much space. He contemplated going back to the corridor outside the closet, but it seemed a long way across the mass of bodies and he was too hungry for that. In the end he found a bit of wall space and sat down, putting his drink carefully on the floor next to his outstretched leg. He was squeezed between a woman with a small child asleep on her lap and a balding guy, glasses, dark eyes that immediately locked with his. The guy nodded a greeting as he started to eat. He had a book in one hand, laid open on his lap. Sawyer tried to read the cover. '_Economic myths and models_.'

'What a complete mess.' Sawyer's eyes snapped up from the book to the guy's face. 'I mean look at this,' the guy waved his hand in front of him. 'It's a complete fiasco. And they're not telling us anything. I've got work, I've got a life. It's a frakking disgrace.'

Sawyer shook his head and smiled. This was just great. He started eating, trying to ignore the guy.

'And you heard the latest? Apparently we have a new president. A school teacher! Yeah. They appointed a school teacher as president. I mean, for gods' sake, a frakking school teacher? We're in the biggest crisis for forty years and they put a school teacher in charge? No one's even heard of her! You think she got voted in? Oh no, democracy goes out the window.'

Sawyer looked up from his food. He couldn't believe this guy. Though he did seem frighteningly familiar. There was something about him.

'And what's happened to the ships without FTL drives, that's what I want to know – I mean it was close, I nearly got the bargain ticket, I nearly didn't upgrade. What if I'd been on one of the bucket ships, huh? They're not saying what happened to them, but come on, do they think we're stupid? I saw them out of the window. I saw them, you know – it was obvious to anyone.'

Ah, he realized what it was. This guy was a cross between Arzt and Frogurt. Oh yes, his subconscious was really lathering it on thick now. What a treat. His idea of social torture. Sawyer mentally tried to close his ears.

'You know that Caprica City's bombed to frak? Someone's got a radio – they said it was nuked. Those frakking toasters. What happened to the defense mainframe? Attacked by frakking toasters.' the guy was muttering now, glaring at his book.

Sawyer paused for a moment, his makeshift spoon poised mid air. In his mind he had a vision of toasters, sandwich makers, a few pots and pans, well, any sort of kitchen equipment flying at this guy, burying him. He finished up that last of the lumpy goo and quickly drank the water.

He pushed back, leaving the empty container next to the Arzt-Frogurt combo and putting his head back on the wall behind him. He settled down and tried to sleep. Maybe Arzt-Frogurt would spontaneously combust. He wondered if he could make him go boom and explode before he said anything else. Maybe he should just roll with it. Get all Zen and accept it as part of his psyche or something.

There was no sign of Juliet. He didn't care now. Her hallucinated self could go wherever she damn well pleased. Her presence or absence was now irrelevant. There was nothing else to do but wait it out. This was boring now. Where was the blonde bombshell or the girl in the tub? Maybe he could make aliens sweep through the door and scare the crap out of Arzt-Frogurt here. He was still talking, but since Sawyer had pointedly closed his eyes he'd started torturing the girl next to him. She was young and pretty and Sawyer wished he'd found a way to sit next to her instead. He must have gone to sleep because Arzt-Frogurt's voice faded to nothing and he was having a dream with Kate and the Island and he was running… and how in hell was he having a dream within a dream? Was that even possible?

He awoke with a start. A voice was blasting around the hangar deck.

'_This is your captain speaking. We're about to make another hyperlight jump, so settle down and keep calm. Best to be sitting down if you can and make sure all hot beverages are secured_.' The voice sounded strangely upbeat. Sawyer tried to clear his head, still groggy from sleep. _Hyperlight jump_? Right. Still in crazy land.

'_OK, here we go. Three, two, one, hold onto your hats folks, off we go.'_

The soggy goo he'd eaten rose swiftly up to his throat as his body turned inside out.

And yeah, he guessed it was bath-time again. He couldn't help but be impressed with the way his subconscious was organizing this. The regular bath-time slots were becoming something to be enjoyed. Especially if the blonde came back. He could have a few more dreams about her...

But this time bath-girl was alone. No metal monsters, no bombshell blonde. Just Juliet standing next to him as usual, this time her hands dripping with water and blood. She had more blood on her now, the front of her gown was wet with some squicky icky stuff, shiny too like there were huge boogers there as well. He didn't even bother meeting her eyes this time, but took in her appearance with a frown and then turned straight back to the bathtub girl. He'd watch her blab some poetic crap for a while, do her orgasmic head back thing and yell _'Jump_.'

He stood and waited for it.


	54. Jump

Chapter 54

Jump

'_Time is wreathed in the eternal stream. Our now is pregnant, hybrid longings fill eternity's loins with hope_.'

Sawyer rolled his eyes. Wherever did he get this stuff from? He sadly had to admit that yes, his subconscious was the author of this poetic masterpiece.

'_Finding coordinates. Plotting the field. Adjusting amplitude. _

_Location location location._

_Jump.'_

This time the poetry was cut short and the orgasmic lurch so understated that he barely registered the scene change - except that it still made his stomach turn inside out and left his throat in his shoes. He shut his eyes as his stomach roiled. And then nothing. Stillness. Silence. He kept his eyes shut another couple of seconds to give his guts time to settle. A small noise beside him told him Juliet was here. He was getting familiar with her almost-vomit sounds now. The tiny little squeaky gasp that told him she was barely holding back her urge to barf all over him. He snapped his eyes open and took a quick step back.

'Don't move.'

He whipped around.

'I _said_. Don't. Move.'

_Boomer_. With a gun pointed right at him. He froze. Her eyes were trained on him, flicking briefly over to his left where he presumed Juliet was still standing, swaying. She always swayed. Usually onto him. He risked a quick glance over to her. Her hands were still dripping. And yeah, she was swaying. She looked scared. His eyes met hers for a fleeting second before he turned his attention back to Boomer and the gun.

Boomer didn't look so good. This wasn't the perky Boomer of a few hours ago- this one looked like the makeup crew had gone to work on her. She had what looked like the remains of a black eye, her hair was disheveled and she was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. The left arm of her flying suit had been ripped off, leaving a thin, fragile looking arm held up by a makeshift sling. A piece of cloth had been tied around her left shoulder and he could see blood seeping out of the wound, running slowly down her arm. At least it looked like blood. Could've been fake blood. Or salsa. Either way, she was holding the gun in her right hand and it was shaking. She looked a wreck. More like that first time they'd met - only the wound wasn't on her face anymore, her left shoulder had taken the bullet this time. Ah yes, he got it now. Just like the time he'd taken that bullet for Walt on the raft when they'd tried to escape the Island. Boomer's wound was in the exact same place. So Boomer was a mirror of him in this weird dream. Complete with chills and fever by the way she was shivering.

His mind was a glorious thing.

He sighed and looked around. Maybe if he ignored the dream-Boomer she'd stop pointing the gun at him. 'You think this is real?' he asked Juliet. Though why in the hell he was asking her he had no idea.

She frowned. 'Why wouldn't it be?'

'We keep jumping about, that's why.'

He watched as Juliet eyed the gun in front of them and then didn't say anything. He paused, a shot of doubt searing through him. 'This _is _the drugs, right?'

Her expression told him that she clearly didn't believe it was the drugs. Oh. OK.

He sobered up a little, eyeing the gun with a little more respect. He wasn't sure he wanted to risk getting shot. Even in a dream.

'Who are you?' Boomer asked, leveling the gun right at his head.

He frowned, then held his hands out in exasperation. 'Aw c'mon Boomer, do we have to do this again?'

Boomer eyes leapt up in surprise.

'What happened to your arm? Or is that a fake injury like the bullet to your face?'

'What's going on?' A man emerged from the shadows, stepping over the bottom of a hatch door.

'I got it, Helo.'

_Helo?_ _Wasn't he the guy?- _'Wait a minute…'

Helo was standing, frowning at him, like he was trying to dredge up a memory of having seen him before.

Sawyer sighed. 'Juliet here barfed all over you.' he supplied helpfully. 'You took us to sickbay. Like, a few hours ago?'

Helo was still staring at him, then he nodded definitively. 'Yeah. I remember you. And your wife.' he nodded over at Juliet.

Juliet didn't say anything.

'You OK?' Helo was watching Boomer with concern.

'I'm fine.' Her reply was tight lipped.

Helo's mouth set in a line, giving Boomer a slow appraising stare. 'You a doctor?' He aimed at Juliet.

Sawyer almost laughed. _Well, duh?_ Dressed like that and covered in blood, what with the cap and the mask and the BLOOD.

'She's hurt.' Helo said, almost dismissively, waving an arm at Boomer. 'Why don't you take a look at her?' Then he turned away, pausing a few steps away from Boomer, his back to her, barely turning when he spoke again. 'I'll just go check out this place, see who else is here. You think you can handle these two?'

Sawyer watched as Boomer stared at Helo for a moment. She looked... sad. Or something. A mess. 'Yeah. I can handle it.' Her voice broke halfway through. Then Helo walked away, leaving Boomer standing with the shaky gun and Juliet taking this as her cue to step forward and invite a bullet to her head.

'Your shoulder's bleeding.' Juliet said gently. 'Want me to take a look at it?'

Boomer took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and then slowly lowered the gun.

'Maybe we should find someplace to sit down.' Juliet was scanning the area around her. Sawyer's eyes followed hers, finally getting a moment to see what this place was; dark green walls, metal, grungy. They were in some sort of dining area, with a kitchen over to one side and chairs and tables strewn around the place, like there'd been a fight. The walls were blackened with scorch marks and peppered with little dents. Over to one side he could see a hatch door - the usual, circular wheel in the center, a heavy metal thing. It was through there that Helo had disappeared, but there was no sign of him now and Sawyer couldn't hear anything from the other side of the door. He didn't like the way it was the only way out of the room. He turned back to Juliet. She'd righted a couple of the chairs and had Boomer sitting down opposite her. When she realized she was still wearing the gloves she smiled apologetically. 'Sorry.' she said quietly, 'I'm a mess.'

Boomer was eyeing the blood suspiciously.

'I was delivering a baby.' Juliet explained with a half smile. 'It looks worse than it is. And the baby was fine.' she gave Boomer another heartwarming smile. Sawyer stood and stared, not even bothering to figure out what this all meant. He watched as she made her way over to the kitchen area, pulling the gloves off and washing her hands. Her movements were smooth and unhurried, like she'd had years of practice making people feel safe and cared for. She shook her hands dry, giving Boomer another apologetic smile before returning to her seat.

'So. What happened here?' She asked, carefully pulling aside the blood-soaked cloth and gently touching the injured shoulder.

'I got shot.' Boomer said emotionlessly.

'Mmm. Well, it looks clean enough, but the wound has opened up - it'll heal better if I stitch it up for you.'

Boomer nodded mutely, holding herself stiffly, pointedly refusing to look at the damaged flesh. Sawyer had to agree it didn't look so good. Looked as if it hurt like a bitch, as a matter of fact. No wonder she was shaking.

'James?' Juliet turned to him, startling him out of his silence. 'Could you see if there's a medical kit around here somewhere?'

'There's a kit on the ship.' Boomer said flatly. 'Helo will know where.'

Sawyer paused, then nodded, taking it that Boomer wouldn't shoot him now if he left the room. He met Juliet's eyes briefly before he slipped through the hatch and into a small corridor, receiving her scared and uncertain smile with a frown. For some reason he felt uncomfortable leaving her there alone. Or leaving Boomer there alone with her. Hell, he wasn't sure about either of them anymore, perhaps they deserved each other – for all he knew they were both in on this together; they'd both be plotting his death the minute he left the room. Crap. He hesitated, resisting the urge to turn back and spy on them. Maybe he should. He crept back a few paces and stuck his head to the side of the door, peering through the crack. He could see Juliet sitting awkwardly in front of Boomer, neither of them saying a word.

He sighed and turned away from the door. The whole drug induced hallucination thing still made the most sense, though even that was making him increasingly uneasy. This all didn't add up. Nothing added up. He scanned the corridor in front of him. This had to be another hatch - which meant they were still on the Island? Or they'd been moved back to the Island, or this was another ship, or hell, he was still strapped to that chair in that room and his brain was fizzing away like Karl's had. At this point he had to admit that he had no clue at all. Which he guessed was the point.

He shook his head and stepped forward. The corridor was narrow and cramped, with what looked like a couple of dorm rooms leading off of it with bunk beds three tiers high. He stuck his head in but kept on going once he saw that there was no sign of Helo in either of them. In front of him, the corridor opened up into a larger room with more chairs and tables - this one looked more like a rec room; the chairs were more comfortable and there were fewer tables. The whole thing reminded him, uncomfortably, of a prison. A prison after a riot. The chairs were all knocked over and the some of the tables were broken. More scorch marks and dents in the walls told him there'd been a fire fight in here as well. He took a deep breath and hoped whoever it was had long gone. Apart from the broken furniture, the room was empty. No Helo. There was another hatch door in the corner, and behind it a narrow metal staircase going up, pushing up onto another level. This hatch was bigger than it looked.

The staircase opened into a huge area, the size of a massive warehouse, empty except for a large pile of rocks at the far end - or they looked like rocks, gray, like they'd just been dumped out of a quarry. Apart from that the place was bare, though as his eyes grew used to the murk he could see the small hatch door over near the rock pile. He walked slowly over to it, feeling uncomfortably exposed in this huge space. He edged nearer to the rock pile, instinctively moving closer to the only cover in the place. He jumped when the hatch door at the end opened suddenly and he saw Helo's bulk filling the gap. He'd drawn his weapon and was pointing it at him before Sawyer even had time to raise his hands in surrender.

'Boomer sent me to find a medical kit. She said there was one on the ship?' Sawyer didn't even try to figure out what ship she'd been talking about. Or pretend that having a gun pointed at his head was counteracted by the idea that he still believed all this was a dream. Only now he wasn't so sure about the dream part. For some reason something still felt really off - and the dream thing wasn't making so much sense anymore. He'd been in enough confusing setups to know that taking one line because it felt the most comfortable and staying with it was a recipe for getting himself killed. In his line of work it paid to sit easy with what was being presented. He was a good conman precisely because he sat lightly with the facts, followed his instincts and wasn't too quick to try and force confusing situations into make too much sense too soon. And no, this didn't make any sense at all, but his instincts were screaming at him that this danger was real and ignoring that simple fact would be a really bad idea.

Besides, Helo looked mad. And he was holding the gun. Sawyer watched uncomfortably as he ducked into the hatch and re-emerged a moment later with a large suitcase. 'Here. Here's the kit.' Helo leant forward and skidded a metal suitcase-sized container across the floor, forcing Sawyer to take a few uneasy steps forward to bend to pick it up. He grabbed the handle and straightened quickly watching uneasily as he stood, waiting - some deep instinct rooting him to the spot. It suddenly seemed a long way back to the stairs at the end of the warehouse and he wasn't sure that turning his back on this guy was such a good plan; the gun was back in its holster, but Helo was still on his toes, like a cat ready to spring. Sawyer had the distinct impression that whatever was going on with Helo, he wasn't done yet.

'We spent the last forty hours running, you know that?' Helo's whole body was full of a sort of nervous energy. Sawyer shifted uneasily. He didn't like the way this was going. 'It was like wherever we jumped they were there, a frakking Basestar right there, so we jumped again, and again, and again. Until we got here. And here you are.' He frowned suspiciously at Sawyer. 'How'd you get here anyway?'

Sawyer shrugged. 'Same as you, I guess.' Hoping that was the right answer. This guy looked far from stable, and he still had the gun.

'So where's your ship?'

'Ship?'

'Yeah, the one you came on.'

'Oh.' He paused. Was there a right or wrong answer here? If he'd been more sure about the whole dream thing he'd have come up with some smart answer, but as things stood, that gun looked like a gun and Juliet was a doctor, so surely she'd know if they'd been drugged all this time or if the drug was just - hell, he didn't know.

'We came on a plane.' he said finally. 'It crashed.'

Helo was watching him impassively. He was silent for a few long seconds. Sawyer could see the rage building inside of him. This was not looking good.

'They look like us.' Helo ground out. 'They look human. But they're not.' his face contorted. 'Same as you.'

Sawyer saw it in his eyes the second he decided to shoot, watching Helo's hand in slow motion as he grabbed the gun from its holster andraised it with phenomenal speed. A shot rang out as Sawyer desperately held the medical case as a shield against his chest and dived to his right, a shot whizzing past his left ear as he threw himself towards the pile of stones, desperately trying to get them between him and the line of sight for that gun. He landed heavily on one arm, grimacing as a few of the stones dug into his side, already scrambling to his feet and running low, still clutching the case. Another two shots, one banging loudly on the container walls behind him, another whining as it ricocheted off the stones in front of him. He finally lay, gasping behind the pile of rocks, dragging in a breath for a second before risking looking around the pile. Another shot send him ducking quickly back behind the relative safety of the rocks.

'Hibbs put you up to this?' He yelled out, his voice echoing around the empty space. There was silence. He listened hard. No sound. 'Cos if he did, you've got the wrong guy!' He paused again. Still no response. He knew it was a longshot, but hell, he was getting desperate here. 'Just so you know - when you've shot me and then found out I ain't who you think I am!'

'How did you get here?'

Sawyer almost moaned in relief. 'I was drugged. Someone drugged me. So I don't know how I got here - and I don't know who did it. I didn't see anyone.' More silence. Sawyer tore open the medical case, scrabbling around for something he could use as a weapon. There were a bunch of bandages, some ointments and salves, a suture kit and a couple of mean looking syringes. He tore open the packaging with his teeth and fixed the needle onto the end. He could stab Helo with it if he could get close enough, but no way did it even come close to evening the odds. 'So is it Hibbs?' Sawyer yelled out, concerned that Helo had been too quiet for too many seconds. He scrabbled around the rock pile a short way, changing his last position. 'Did Hibbs put a hit on me, is that it?' More silence. 'Or was it Bug-Eyed Ben?' He spat out the name through gritted teeth.

'Bug-Eyed Ben?' Helo's voice sounded strained.

'Yeah. Captain Bunny Killer.'

There was a pause. 'You want to live through the next five minutes? Then show me you're human.'

'What? Oh right. So this goes along with the goddamn gravity mix on some planet called _Picon_?'

Another pause.

'I thought you were a nice guy four hours ago!' Sawyer yelled for good measure. Hell, if he was going down, he may as well get it all out first. 'So why don't you just cut the crap and tell me who sent you?'

Another silence, but this one was heavier, like the guy was thinking about it. Sawyer hoped he was thinking about it, because a syringe just wasn't going to cut it against that gun. Especially with someone like Helo, who clearly knew how to shoot straight.

'Look, whoever you think I am, and whatever you think I did, I didn't, OK? And if Hibbs is behind this, he's a lying bastard. Just so's you know.'

'You haven't convinced me you're human yet.' The voice called back. He could hear from the direction of the voice that Helo hadn't gotten much closer. Smart move. Meant he had all the angles covered - and that he was still out of reach of the damn syringe.

'And how the hell am I supposed to do that?'

'You tell me.'

'Oh c'mon. OK. I was born in Alabama, and-'

'Boomer was from Picon. She had the perfect background all laid out. And she's a Cylon.'

'Yeah, well _Picon's_ a planet, so no kidding she wasn't who she said she was. Surprised you didn't figure that one out for yourself.' This conversation was getting weird now, but he was past caring so long as he kept the guy talking.

Another pause. 'They herded us here, you know. Kept turning up until this was the only place left to hide. And funny how you were right here waiting for us.'

'I told you, we was drugged. I don't even know where the hell we are.'

A grunt. 'On some mining base above Picon.'

Sawyer groaned. _Not Picon. Anything but Picon__._ 'What is it with all the sci-fi crap anyway? - did Ben put you up to it? Is this his idea of a joke - what, is he watching all of this? Figured he'd get y'all here to talk about planets and gravity mixes to show how goddamned smart he is? Well, tell him from me, he's dumb as pig shit.'

There was something between a laugh and growl from where Helo was hiding.

Sawyer took a deep breath and kept going. 'The planet stuff is getting stale now - tell him the Star Wars theme ain't doing it for me. I never even watched the movies. Planets and space ships is kinda lame, don't you think?' He checked the syringe, making sure the needle was pushed on firmly. Maybe there was some sort of drug he could inject him with. 'Figured he'd come up with something a little more creative after the pacemaker stunt he pulled last time. C'mon Ben, you wanna see me dead? Why not come and kill me yourself. I know you're watching!'

'Who's Ben?' Helo's voice was curt but interested. Sawyer took a deep breath.

'He's the bastard who sent you. Unless it was Hibbs. Either way, I figure they're probably in it together. How much they offer you?'

A forced laugh. 'You think I can't see what you're doing? You think I don't know you'd lie and say anything to stop me killing you.'

'Yeah, well, kinda natural reaction, ain't it? And you better get on with it 'cos Boomer down there needs this medical kit afore she bleeds out.'

'I dressed her wound. She's not bleeding out. And that isn't Boomer.'

'Right. It's her twin sister.'

'I told you, she's a Cylon.'

'If I even knew what that _meant_. Who are you people anyway? Is this a drugs run, is that it? C'mon, you gonna kill me anyway, may as well tell me who you are - that way at least I don't die curious.'

'I still don't know you're human.'

'Well, dammit, how the hell do I know _you're_ human?'

'You don't.'

Sawyer sighed. 'Please don't tell me you're one of those guys who think the aliens are about to get them.'

'No. I'm the guy that _knows_ the Cylons have destroyed everything. I saw it. I was on Caprica.'

'Caprica? Not another planet... C'mon. Enough already.'

'What's your name?'

'James Ford. I'm from Alabama, from the grand ol' U.S. of A, Planet Earth.'

'Earth?'

'Yeah.'

'You're telling me you're from Earth?'

'Oh c'mon, do we have to do this? This is killing me. Look, just drop the act and try and shoot me.'

'Fine. Come out and I'll shoot you. You're gonna die anyway - may as well make it easy on me.'

Sawyer lay back against the stones. This wasn't going quite as well as he'd hoped. 'Who are Cylons, anyway?'

'Seriously?'

'Yeah, well, first Boomer and Racetrack, then Starbuck. Always knew there was something kinda funny about y'all. Kept going on about Cylons but none of you ever said who they was. And what was with that plane with all them body parts? They figured Ben made it. They thought Ben was a Cylon, and I ain't with Ben. So I ain't a Cylon - so why you tryin' to shoot me? It don't add up!'

'So Ben's a Cylon?'

'How in the hell would I know?'

There was a longer pause this time. Too long. Sawyer had to keep him talking. 'Hey, are we even on the Island, is that where we are? Another hatch, yeah?'

More silence. At least Helo sounded less pissed now. Sawyer pushed on. 'What about Juliet. She with you?'

'Juliet?'

'Yeah. The Doc. She with you?'

'Isn't she your wife?'

'No, she ain't my wife. Boomer said she was. But then Boomer ain't Boomer, so hell, kinda hard to keep up with it all. Juliet was with Ben, so...'

There was a sudden scuffing sound and Sawyer turned his head to see Helo standing over him, the gun held in both hands.

Sawyer sighed. 'Guess this is it then.'

'Get up.'

Sawyer frowned.

'Put that back in the case.' Helo nodded at the syringe.

Sawyer shrugged. 'It was kind of a long shot anyway.' He reluctantly placed it back in the container, snapping the lid down.

'Now move. Over to the stairs. Bring the medical kit.'

Sawyer got up slowly. 'So you ain't going to shoot me.'

'Maybe.'

Sawyer grunted and picked himself up slowly, making all his movements slow and even.

'I'll be right behind you, so don't try anything stupid.'


	55. Shot of Love

Chapter 55

Shot of Love

Four shots. She'd counted four shots. Then silence. A long, eerie, brooding silence. Her hands had been on the injured woman's shoulder, gently unwinding the blood-soaked bandage, feeling a sense of relief when she'd seen how the new blood had softened the old, making it easier to remove the cloth without pulling too much on the wound itself.

They'd been sitting in awkward silence, exchanging names as Juliet tried to put the other woman at ease. Her name was Sharon. And then Juliet had tried to make a joke about the bleeding at least keeping the wound clean, but Sharon had been so stiff and tense that it hadn't even elicited the tiniest hint of a smile. And then the shots, drowning out anything else they might have said to each other. With the first shot her whole body had jumped as if the bullet had been ricocheting right through her. Two more shots, making her body jerk each time. Then a fourth. Silence. She'd stilled, her breath caught in her throat, letting her hands drift slowly to her lap as she met the other woman's eyes. So now they were both silent, eyes meeting in shock and fear. Juliet took a deep, long, breath. She glanced over to the hatch door where Sawyer had followed Helo a few minutes before, a growing feeling of dread crawling inside her. Which one was dead? _Four shots._ James? Unless he'd taken the gun and it was Helo. Or maybe they'd found someone else and both of them were lying bleeding somewhere. She felt her whole body start to shake.

A chair scraping, movement next to her. She turned slowly to see Sharon on her feet, the gun shaking again in her right hand. 'Get over there.' The gun hand nudged over to the far wall. Juliet's gaze drifted from the gun to the wounded left shoulder. The bandages had fallen to the floor and the wound was open, gaping, bleeding. For some weird, inexplicable reason, Juliet hoped she'd have the chance to fix that up before it got any worse.

'Your shoulder's still bleeding. You need to keep pressure on the wound.' She said quietly.

Sharon's gaze hardened and she took another step back, pointing the gun more firmly at her. 'Stand over there.' she gestured towards the other side of the room.

Juliet slipped quietly to a space by the wall. The numbness was washing over her again; the cushioned, unreal feeling that told her this was all too much and if she shut her eyes maybe it would all go away. She stood with her back to the wall, four feet away from the door, ten feet from the shaking gun. Then more silence. Sharon was leaning against the kitchen counter, still holding the gun in her general direction, but even Juliet could see that her heart wasn't in it. This was just an insurance because neither of them knew which of the two men was going to return through that door. For some reason she didn't think it was going to be James Ford. Which meant, of course, that he was dead. Sawyer was dead. And she was here, alone. She felt her body start to shake again, the numbness dissolving quickly into blind terror.

The silence stretched out. After those first four shots they hadn't heard anything. No sounds at all. No voices, no footsteps. The hatch door was closed though, and the shots had seemed kind of muffled, like they were coming from a long way off, so it could be that this place was well sound-proofed or... or something. Juliet stood there quietly, her breathing about the only thing holding her together. It helped that she could see that Sharon was shaking as well, though her trembling was probably from pain and exhaustion. There was a thin sheen of sweat on her face. Her shoulder looked a mess. However bad Juliet felt, she could see that the woman in front of her felt immeasurably worse. 'How'd it happen?' asked Juliet quietly, nodding over to the gruesome looking wound on her shoulder, her sympathy winning out over her fear.

She watched as Sharon swallowed hard, debating whether or not to answer. In this light Juliet could see the purple of the fading bruise over her left eye, the faint scab of a split lip, more bruising almost faded to nothing around her jaw bone. She'd been beaten up. Old bruises. Juliet could only guess what she'd looked like when the beating was fresh. Finally Sharon's lips moved in answer. 'Helo shot me.' she said simply.

Juliet was still watching her lips when the words finally sunk in. _Helo shot her?_ 'By accident?'

'No. But I guess if he'd really wanted to kill me he'd have shot me in the head.'

That wasn't exactly what she'd expected to hear. Juliet felt her whole body screaming at her to run, that this place wasn't safe, that she wasn't safe, that none of them were safe. Another deep, slow breath. _In. Out._

The sound of scraping metal pulled both their attention to the hatch door. Suddenly Sawyer was stepping through it carrying a medical kit with Helo right behind him.

Juliet met Sawyer's eyes and quickly checked to see that he was uninjured. 'You're alive,' she breathed, the relief clear in her voice. 'We heard shots.' She added when Sawyer paused and gave her a confused frown. 'I thought-'

'Yeah, well, _Al Capone_ here thought he'd use me for some target practise. I got you the medical kit.' He righted one of the tables and laid the small case in front of her, stepping back quickly and glancing nervously at Helo, who, she noticed, was pointing his gun squarely at Sawyer's chest. She gave him a shaky smile of thanks as she clipped the case open and examined its contents.

'I guess they're with you.' Helo's voice sounded harsh and loud.

'No.' Sharon's voice had the same defeated, weary note as the rest of her body. 'I've never seen them before, Helo. They're human, OK? So you can stuff the gun and the hard ass attitude before you shoot anyone else.'

'And how do I know you're not lying? Because that's what you all do, isn't it? Lie. Pretend to be people you're not-'

She sighed and closed her eyes. 'Are we doing this again? I told you. I'm not lying to you, Helo. This is the truth. These people ain't Cylons. If they were, I'd know, OK?'

Juliet took another deep, slow breath, her hands frozen over the medical equipment. Then she started sorting through, slowly and methodically looking for a suture kit, bandages, and something to help with the pain. Sawyer was still standing in the middle of the room, motionless, and for once, speechless. He looked scared. Shaken up. Helo was looking mean and angry, holding the gun like it was a part of him, like it was his best friend. She guessed that those shots had been aimed at Sawyer then. She spared him another look, meeting Sawyer's frightened stare. 'You OK?' she asked, watching his eyes widen in surprise at her question. He swallowed hard but didn't answer. She took that as a no. One thing she knew about James Ford was that he didn't scare easy. This wasn't good. Wasn't good at all.

She picked up a roll of bandages and a suture kit and faced Helo square on. 'Are we done shooting at each other? Because I need to sew up Sharon's shoulder.' It took all her courage to say it, all her courage to pretend that she wasn't shaking with fear, everything in her to stay focussed and somehow turn the tension away from the guns and the likelihood of someone dying in this small room. She looked pointedly at Helo. He gave a small, curt nod and she fumbled in the medical kit, pulling out the suture kit and what looked like some rubbing alcohol, a syringe and a vial of some sort of opiate.

She moved over to Sharon, examining the vial she'd dug out of the case. 'Are you familiar with this drug? I've not come across it before.'

Sharon looked surprised, but nodded. 'It's for pain.' She said quietly.

Juliet quickly read the label and the dosage instructions.

'You _are _a doctor, right?' Helo was standing suspiciously by the door, glaring at her.

'Yes. But these drugs aren't ones I'm familiar with.'

'It's standard.' He said flatly.

She gave a deep, ragged sigh. 'Look. I'm not a surgeon, I'm a fertility specialist. I look after pregnant women. If you want to go find a doctor who's more up to date with modern drugs then please, feel free to do that, but Sharon's shoulder needs to be stitched up, and looking around here, it seems like I'm the one most qualified to do it. But if you want to do it yourself, then please go ahead.'

It was the most she'd said in a while. Helo's expression was hard. Angry. He seemed like an angry man. She saw his jaw clench. 'You do it.' he said stiffly, not taking his eyes off of her, his stare impassive.

'Fine.'

She sat down and began slowly began to dab around the wound with the rubbing alcohol.

'You look after pregnant women.' He said after a short pause.

She closed her eyes for a moment. 'Yes.'

'Ain't that a little too much of a coincidence?' She turned to see he wasn't aiming his question at her any more, but at Sharon.

'And your point, Helo?'

'This is a frakking trap!' he was almost shouting now. 'They know we're here, Sharon!'

There was a stunned silence. Then the familiar click of a safety coming off.

'Who sent you here?'

'If I knew that I'd die happy.' Sawyer's drawl sounded like so much bravado, but she could feel the fear and panic under it. 'Look, it's like I told you, we was drugged, and I don't know who put us here.'

Juliet stiffened. 'We were in a room.' she said quickly. 'There was a woman in a tub.'

'Yeah, but that was a dream, weren't it?'

She shook her head and faced Sawyer across the room. 'I don't think it was a dream.'

'A woman in a tub?' It was Sharon talking now.

'Yeah. Then there was the silver robot. That bit was fun. And the stunning blonde…' Sawyer's voice was laced with sarcasm and fear.

Helo cut him off. 'Wait - there was a Centurion. What-?'

Sharon swallowed hard. 'Hold it, Helo. This woman in the tub - what did she do?'

'She talked, then yelled _jump _and we ended up someplace else. Happened a few times.'

'What did she say?'

'I dunno. Weird stuff. Didn't make any sense-'

'The hybrid.' Juliet watched as Sharon stiffened. 'You're right. They know we're here.'

There was a pause.

'They must be tracking the ship.'

'Yeah.'

'Frak.'

'Am I missing something?' Sawyer's voice again, stronger now.

Sharon ignored him. 'But why send a doctor? – Maybe they're trying to help us, maybe-'

'What, like they haven't been trying to kill us for the last two months! Or was that fake? Maybe they just wanted to help and you didn't have to save my life after all.'

'Trust me, Helo. They were trying to kill us.'

'And they're not now?'

More silence. Juliet had just about finished cleaning around the wound. Then she sat for a moment reading the instructions again on the vial that Sharon had told her was a pain killer.

'It needs to go in a muscle.' Sharon said quietly.

'Here. I'll do that.' Helo was standing over her, the gun still in one hand. 'It's standard issue. Even for the frakking Cylons.'

She heard Sharon give a snort.

'Surprised you need this.' He said to her. 'Couldn't you have come up with a better design? That's if you're really feeling it.'

'I'm feeling it. More than you know… You realize it means they know I'm pregnant? Maybe that changes things for them too.' She gave Helo a pointed look.

He clenched his jaw and turned away.


	56. Rat

Chapter 56

Rat

'I hate to break this up, but can someone tell me what the hell is going on?'

Juliet ignored him. 'You're pregnant?' She asked Sharon. 'How many weeks?'

'We first made love twenty eight days ago.' Sharon looked pointedly across at Helo, bristling when he gave a derisory snort.

''OK. Well, that means that you're actually six weeks along now –it's calculated from the day of your last period,' she said in response to the confused looks as they all started counting up the difference between twenty eight days and six weeks, '.. and I'm afraid I can't give you this.' She held up the drug phial. 'But I'll see if there's anything topical I can use to numb your shoulder.' She stood up and rummaged in the medical kit, pulling out a spray bottle and reading the label. Then she sniffed it and, satisfied, sat back down opposite Sharon. 'Hopefully this will take the edge off it enough to be bearable, but just tell me if it's too much and I'll stop, OK?'

'Is the baby going to be OK?' asked Sharon shakily.

'You've had no cramps, bleeding?'

Sharon shook her head.

'I'm sure everything's just fine.' She gave her a reassuring smile. 'But you do need to rest - and eat. This wound isn't infected, so that's good. But from the look of you I'm guessing you're exhausted.' She looked pointedly at Helo. 'So we'll finish stitching you up, and then you can go lie down while we find you something to eat.'

Sawyer had sat back through the whole of this exchange. So. Sharon here - the Boomer lookalike - was pregnant, Helo obviously was the daddy. And what? And Juliet was going to find food. And everyone was being chased by someone and that someone knew they were all here. Oh, and there was a ship. That was enough for him. He slipped out of the room while they were all grimacing over Juliet sticking the suture needle into Sharon's shoulder.

He was through the corridor and up the stairs, jogging past the pile of rocks and over to the door through which Helo had disappeared to fetch the medical kit. The ship. He'd get on the ship and get the hell out of there and leave all these crazy people behind. Simple. Another hatch door, a small, empty corridor, and he was inside a… submarine? He hesitated. A hollow space, room for twenty people or so and then a cockpit. This wasn't a ship. This was a plane. There was no deck, no outside, no…

'There's no fuel, so give up any idea that you'd be going anywhere.' Helo was standing behind him, leaning against the wall, idly toying with his gun.

'Yeah, well, I thought maybe there'd be a sail.' He said sarcastically. He hadn't, of course, he was just pissed that Helo had followed him so fast. He was supposed to be playing the doting father to Sharon's shoulder.

'A sail?' Helo raised his eyebrows with an amused, patronising look.

'Yeah, you know, big, white, uses the wind. Seeing as y'all said it was a ship...'

'Yeah. A space ship.'

'Oh.' Sawyer looked around. 'It's a plane.'

'Nope. It's a Cylon. The frakking thing's alive. They all are.'

'You know, this would be a hell of a lot easier if you cut the bullshit.'

Helo laughed dryly. 'Oh I'm not the one bullshitting.'

Sawyer observed the array of high tech equipment in front of him. It looked like the cockpit of a jet plane only with more… high tech stuff. The cockpit had a large, wide windshield, but all he could see out of it was the grey metal of the hatch itself.

Helo stepped forward and bent down over one of the panels. 'I've been trying to monitor the air traffic, pick up something from Galactica or any other Colonial signals. So far nothing.' He flipped a button and a green screen came up, a white line sweeping around a curve.

'What's that, some sort of radar?'

'Dradus.' He said clearly, watching the thing going round.

'So what's it say?'

'That there's nothing out there.'

'And that's good, right?'

'Yeah, well, that depends. It's good that there aren't any Cylons.'

'Right. So you're runnin' too?' Sawyer looked around at the walls of the plane. He didn't see any body parts.

Helo didn't say anything.

'Look, seems to me that we both might have the same problem, so how about we start gettin' along rather than tryin' to bullshit or shoot the crap out of each other?' He eyed the gun in Helo's hand meaningfully.

'OK. So how about you start telling the truth about who you are and where you're from?'

'I already told you where I'm from. And you already told me you're from Caprica.'

'That's right.'

'The _planet_ Caprica.'

'Yup.'

Sawyer gave a dry laugh. 'Fine. Have it your way, big guy.'

'No. I really _am_ from the planet Caprica. Now you go.'

'Well, like I said I'm from the planet Earth.'

'Touché.'

'Yeah. Well.'

'You know Earth doesn't exist, right?'

'Are we doing this again? Look, it's OK. I get it - you don't trust me, I don't' trust you-'

'No wait, I told you the truth. I'm from Caprica.'

'Yeah, well I told you the truth too. So one of us is lying and it ain't me.'

'If you're from Earth, then how did you get here?'

'I dunno. One minute we was on the Island and then the next…'

'What Island?'

'Don't know that either. Someplace in the South Pacific, we reckon. Starbuck said it was Kobol.'

'Starbuck? Starbuck was there?' Then he laughed. 'Right. Starbuck was with you on earth.'

'Yeah. She crashed the plane with the body parts. Then it took off on its own and started shooting. Crazy times, huh?'

Helo shook his head. 'And she said it was Kobol?'

'Hell, yeah! But it wasn't a planet. Our Airplane crashed, OK? On Earth. On an Island, in the middle of the damn ocean. No planets, no spaceships.'

'The plane Starbuck was in was a spaceship.'

'Oh good grief.'

Helo was frowning. 'You really think you're from Earth?'

Sawyer shook his head in exasperation. 'And you're not?'

'No, like I said, I'm from Caprica.'

'Yeah, yeah, and Boomer's from Picon.'

'No. Boomer's from some frakking test tube.'

Sawyer gave a snort of amusement, meeting Helo's half smile.

'How'd you know Boomer anyway?'

'Met her on the Island. With Racetrack.'

'Racetrack was her ECO?'

'Yeah, they said something about that. Her name's Margaret, you know that?'

Helo was frowning.

'Oh, and then Apollo and the Chief wound up at Ben's camp. They didn't do so great till our Doc rescued them. Got to be quite a party.' He decided to leave out the part when Starbuck had shot Charlie. Helo might get ideas and he was trigger happy enough as it was.

'And you're saying they're all there now, on this Island?'

'Well I saw Boomer with you yesterday, so I guess not.'

'You didn't see me yesterday.'

'Yeah, on Galactica, when Juliet barfed all over you.'

'That was nearly two months ago.'

'Right.' The guy was crazy. Like should be taking the pills crazy.

'OK, so tell me about Earth.'

'You're kidding.'

'Nope.'

Sawyer gave a small laugh and shook his head. Humour the crazy guy with the gun. If he kept him talking he wasn't shooting and the planet thing obviously lit his candle. 'Alrighty. Well it's this little blue planet, with water and sunshine and, hell, I don't know. What's there to say?'

'You're not selling this to me.'

'So, what, you gonna shoot me if you don't like the story?'

Another smirk from Helo. He flipped off the green screen and shook his head. 'OK. So the Doc, she think she's from Earth as well?'

'Guess so. Why don't you go on and ask her?'

'Yeah. Think I will.'

00000

The food was some dried stuff in paper packets. Boxes of it. She picked one at random and tore it open, sniffing the contents suspiciously. On the side was a description of what it was supposed to be but she didn't recognise half the words. She found a pan in one of the cupboards and tipped in the mixture. There was some white powder with lumps of green and some brown stuff that she guessed was meat. She'd promised Sharon some food and she hoped this stuff was going to at least be edible. She gave it another sniff. So far it didn't smell of anything. She frowned again at the packet, trying to figure out how much water she was supposed to add.

'You need a hand with that?'

She jumped. Helo had come in quietly and was standing right behind her. She'd left Sharon in the room over the hall, lying on a lower bunk, her shoulder stitched and re-bandaged. Helo and Sawyer had disappeared someplace. They'd been gone a while. And now he'd appeared suddenly. Alone. She just hoped Helo hadn't silently killed them both while she'd been in here looking for food.

'Is Sharon OK?' she asked pointedly.

He shifted awkwardly. 'Yeah. She's sleeping. I checked on her just now.'

Juliet hesitated. She was on the tip of accusing him of shooting Sharon and demanding to know why. But the last thing she needed was to make him mad, especially now he'd finally calmed down to something bordering on reasonable. So instead of talking about wounds and guns, she turned to the pan in front of her. 'I don't know how much water to put in.' she said quietly.

'I'll take care of that.' He said, moving even closer.

'Thank you.' She stepped back, letting go of the pan, immediately feeling a wave of panic as he came right beside her.

Helo sniffed at the dried mix and then examined the packet label. '_Routrain stew_.' He nodded approvingly.

'That's good?'

'Yeah. You never had it?'

She shook her head. 'What's in it?'

'_Routrain_? It's a kind of rat they have in the mines.'

'Rat? We're eating rat?'

He was watching her curiously. 'It's good meat. They eat it on Picon all the time.'

She shook her head. 'Is there something else, some beef or lamb?'

He smiled. 'Routrain's good.' She watched as he mixed it with water and set it on the stove. 'So you're from Earth.'

'Excuse me?'

'Earth. The other guy-'

'James?'

'Yeah, he says he's from Earth.'

She was looking confused. 'Um. I was actually living in Miami.'

'Which is where?'

'In the U.S.' There was a pause. 'Are you working for Ben?'

'He's the guy on the Island, right?'

A longer pause. 'You know him?' She hoped the audible shake in her voice hadn't given her away.

'Nope.'

She gave an audible sigh.

Helo looked over at her quizzically, leaving a thoughtful pause. She squirmed uncomfortably. 'OK. So let's try this from a different angle,' he was saying amicably. 'Name the planets in your solar system.'

'What?'

'The planets in your solar system. You have a sun, yeah?'

She frowned. Her eyes darted to the door where there was no sign of Sawyer or Sharon or anyone else. She was alone with this crazy guy. She quickly decided to keep him talking and hope James turned up sometime soon. 'Um. Yeah. We have a sun.'

'So… all the planets that go around it. Name them.'

'OK.' She could feel the familiar panic rising again. She swallowed nervously. 'So…uh, you want them in order?'

'Yeah. Why not? In order.'

She took a deep breath. 'OK, well, Mercury, then Venus. Saturn. Mars. Earth, uh, Pluto. Uranus. Venus…'

'Pluto ain't a planet.' Sawyer was standing by the door. The moment she saw him she heaved a sigh of relief.

'Yes it is.'

'No, it got downgraded. It was too small. It's like, a meteor or something. And you missed Neptune.' He came over and peered into the pan. 'Smells good. What is it?'

'Rat.' she said definitively.

'You're kidding.'

'Apparently they eat it all the time on Picon.' She was smiling at him and then both of them started to laugh. Really laugh, like this was the funniest thing they'd ever heard, in spite of the fact that Helo was standing there with a gun she had no clue what the hell was going on, but now she couldn't stop because eating rat from the planet Picon was just the most ridiculous part of this whole thing yet. 'Oh god, I swear, if Ben is listening in, he needs to know how funny this is.' she wiped her eyes on her hand and shot Sawyer a smile. 'This is so crazy.' She added under her breath.

'Yeah. Ain't that the truth.' She watched him as he sobered up fast when he caught Helo's thoughful glance. He hadn't even smiled when they were laughing. That wasn't a good sign. The last thing they needed was to get him all riled up again.

'You think this place is under surveillance?' Helo asked in the same measured tone.

'Well don't you?'

'No. I checked it out. It's clean.'

'So no one's watching us?'

Helo shook his head, stirring the food again.

'Well, someone put us here. You think I'd volunteer to spend a day with a crazy guy who thinks he's an alien from the planet Zorg?'

'Caprica.' Helo corrected calmly, reaching for a couple of plates and then beginning to dole out the food. 'I'm from the planet Caprica.' Juliet watched as a dollop of it landed on the plate – some sort of thick sauce, with green vegetables and large lumps of brown meat.

'So how many rats you get in there?' Sawyer asked him.

'Probably just the one.'

'Big rat.'

'Yeah, they are.'

'Well, I sure wouldn't like to meet one of them on a dark night.' Juliet continued as lightly as she could, figuring that Sawyer was probably right to manage this guy by keeping up the jokes, ribbing him. But not laughing too much. She got that now.

'They farm them. They pull the carts.'

'The rats pull the carts?'

'Yeah. Why - don't they on _Earth_?'

'No. They crawl around in the sewers, spread disease and eat food from the trash. They ain't big enough to pull carts.'

'Oh.' Helo looked thoughtful again. 'Well, how big are your rats?'

Sawyer made a rat sized shape with his hands.

'Ah, well, where I come from rats are _this_ big.' Helo held his hands up near his chest. 'And they pull carts.'

Sawyer shook his head and smiled. 'Glad I ain't from your planet then.'


	57. The Spiv

Chapter 57

The Spiv

London May 2004

It had been seven and a half years. Seven and a half years since that night Desmond had turned up ragged and wild and Eloise had told them that he was from the future. It didn't seem real now. It had been too fleeting to be anything but a frustratingly brief hiatus in the dullness of her ordinary life, but too important to do anything but shatter everything she thought she knew into a million pieces.

Future Desmond had arrived out of nowhere, and then had just disappeared and there was nothing she could do except wait for him to come back. Present day Desmond was – well, wherever he was; in the army, on a boat, on an Island. She'd written to him and even tried to visit him when he'd ended up in that army prison, but he'd refused to see her and had never answered her letters or come to the phone again when she'd tried to call. And then he'd just disappeared. She remembered his future self saying that he'd spent three years on that Island. That meant that he was there now, pressing some button to release the EM energy that Eloise had told them would catapult him halfway across the universe. She still couldn't believe it. It still seemed totally ludicrous and preposterous and crazy and far-fetched and any other word she could think of that helped her to believe that it hadn't happened. But Desmond had been there, in her little house in suburban London, and he'd said he'd loved her and was from the future and somehow she hadn't been able to let go of that.

She had no idea whether or not she would ever see Desmond again, but part of her was still waiting. And counting. Once the remainder of 2004 came and went, maybe then she'd be able to let it go. She hadn't quite gotten over the feeling that he might appear in her bedroom suddenly one day and… maybe not. She still looked every time she went to the bathroom or the spare room, still did a quick inventory of the room whenever she went in there. Even after seven and a half years.

Seven and a half years. Seven and a half years since she'd seen him, and now the time was fast approaching when that future Desmond melded with the present and she would finally catch up with him. Seven more months. And then what? So far she was fairly certain that he was alive, living out his scripted life waiting for the time when it would all get knocked sideways and he would end up on a spaceship thinking it was drugs that had turned his world so spectacularly crazy. Unless it had all changed, of course. Unless the future Desmond, the wild-eyed space junkie, had changed the past so that current Desmond wasn't following the script anymore. Perhaps he was living a very different life from the one mapped out in Daniel's little book. In which case he could even be dead by now.

But Eloise said differently. She said nothing had changed, that what had happened had already happened, that Daniel had already done it, had already messed around with the EM wave and now it was history.

But Daniel _hadn't_ done it because it hadn't happened yet, and wouldn't for another seven months.

But Daniel was still muttering about space ships because it had already happened and it was in his past.

Which one trumped the other?

She had no idea.

If she even understood any of it.

According to Eloise, Daniel's past was the true version, of course. But she would say that, wouldn't she? Daniel was her son, her world. Eloise was totally biased. Penny tried not to be bitter, tried not to hate the woman, but Eloise was responsible for what had happened to Desmond and it was utterly selfish for Eloise to be so blasé about sacrificing everyone else's love and happiness because she'd behaved like a trigger-happy psychopath when she was younger. It was bad enough that she'd shot her only son in the back, but now she was prepared to do anything to try and undo it, not caring who else she destroyed in the process. The woman was callous. No doubt about that. Then and now. She hadn't changed very much- she was still wrecking lives; she just wasn't using a gun.

In spite of her low opinion of his mother, Penny still made an effort. Daniel was still her brother and Eloise her only source of information about whatever was unraveling with Desmond. So she tried to be civil, even friendly, still saw Eloise occasionally, still feigned a neutrality she didn't feel. And no, she didn't pity Eloise even though Daniel was no better and the strain had sucked the life out of the woman. She couldn't say she was all that sorry. Really, it served the woman right.

Things weren't any better with her father either. He had tried to communicate but she was openly hostile to him. No need to pretend there. Seriously, both of them were made for each other, she could see why they had gotten together in the first place – and she was quite sure that the whole incident that had put Desmond in a military prison and then thrown him out with a dishonorable discharge had been due to her father's pathetic little manipulations behind the scenes. Charles Widmore was controlling and cruel - which anyone who actually knew him could confirm. And Penny hated him, too.

It seemed like the seven years had made her bitter.

Seven and a _half_ years.

Her life was on hold and it wasn't healthy. And now here she was thinking about it again. Staring at the wall, watching paint peel as her thoughts went round and round. Same old. Nothing new. There was no chance for anything new. Desmond had come and gone for a few brief hours and she'd been on about it ever since like some pitiful, love-sick adolescent with a would-be boyfriend from the future who she may never see again. She shook herself out of her ridiculously maudlin thoughts and continued what she was doing, stacking the dishes in the dishwasher. It was 5 pm. She was meeting with friends at 8. Some pub night somewhere in central London. She'd drag herself there, go through the motions and then leave early.

A knock on the door stopped her on the way to the stairs, freezing her hand to the banister, her foot poised over the first step. Every time anything unexpected happened her heart went to her throat and she thought it was him. Though he hadn't knocked, had he? He'd simply turned up on her bedroom floor. Even so, she wasn't expecting anyone and even if it was only Mrs Bateman from next door with another collecting tin she still reacted the same.

'Yes?' She threw the door open wide and put on her best smile for the latest charity. Her smile froze. It wasn't Mrs Bateman and there was no sign of a collecting tin, instead there was a swarthy, dark haired man, immaculately dressed in a blue shirt and perfectly creased trousers. He smiled a frozen, nervous smile that didn't reach his eyes. He looked like he was wearing mascara.

She didn't like strange well-dressed strangers turning up at her door. She immediately thought they had something to do with her father. Her eyes roamed down his upper torso, looking for a gun. She'd always suspected her father's activities and had no intention of becoming collateral damage or leverage or whatever else his enemies might have planned for his daughter. It took a millisecond for her to assess her options. Slam the door on his face quickly and then phone for the police, or slam the door and then get out through the French windows? She'd idly thought of what she'd do in this sort of situation before, but this was the first time a spiv had actually turned up and now she really wasn't prepared.

'My name is Richard,' the spiv said with the same smile. 'Richard Alpert.' And then he paused, obviously expecting a response. She was busy calculating how fast he could run. Fast, by the look of him.

'Do I know you?' she frowned.

'It would certainly make my job easier if you did.' A calculated pause. 'Can I come in?' He was smooth, polished, like a used car salesman, but with a hint of wildness that shrieked _hit man!_

Her eyes grew wide in surprise, 'No. No, you can't.'

'Please. This is important… It's about the Island.'

'_The Island?'_

'Please,' he said. 'I've come a long way. I just want to talk.' He put his hands up in a placating gesture. 'Five minutes of your time, that's all.'

The Island. Desmond. Was this man connected with Eloise? He was looking at her with a wary friendliness and she had no idea in which category to place him. Friend, or foe? But the Island meant Desmond, didn't it? Especially now, with seven months to go. If she slammed the door and it was news of Desmond then…With a defeated sigh she stepped back and gestured him inside. He gave her a polite smile as he crossed the threshold and waited while she shut the door and led him to the sitting room.

'Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Alpert?' she asked coolly.

'Just water, thanks.' He stared curiously around him as she grabbed a glass, filled it and then handed it to him, gesturing him to sit down. She hovered by the door as he took a seat on the edge of the couch, the glass of water held delicately between his fingers. She suddenly doubted whether this was about Desmond at all. Neither Eloise nor her father had shown any concern for Desmond, and they were the only ones she knew with any connection to the Island. Chances were this was totally unrelated. She debated for a moment whether she should just leave now, head over to Mrs Bateman's next door and phone the police from there. Mr Alpert must have sensed she was about to run because he cleared his throat and began to speak. 'I don't really know where to start.' He gave a little laugh.

She waited, arms crossed, still standing by the door. He was acting, she could see that. The coy smiles and false uncertainty were clearly meant to either put her at ease or distract her. Whichever it was, it wasn't working.

'Look, this is kind of awkward, but I've been sent because-'

'By whom?' she asked sharply. If her father was involved this was going to get very unpleasant very quickly.

'Jacob.'

That threw her for a second. Then the panic. She didn't know a Jacob. Richard Alpert went quickly back into the _hitman_ category. She felt her mouth go try, thinking fast while she tried to keep the conversation as even as she could. 'And I'm supposed to know who that is? Because-'

'Did your father never speak to you about the Island?'

'No,' she said honestly, 'Never.'

'But you know he grew up there?'

'Eloise Hawking told me. She told me all about it.'

'Eloise.' He nodded thoughtfully. 'I wonder which version she gave you.' He said wistfully.

'Hers, of course,' said Penny firmly, 'And am I right in thinking that you want to give me your version?'

He smiled, 'No. That's not why I'm here.' He took a small, delicate sip of the water, then took a deep breath, 'What do you know about your father?'

She froze. 'I really don't see what my father-'

'Please, I'm just here to pass on a message, that's all.' Another short pause. 'Have you heard the name Benjamin Linus?'

'No. Maybe. It sounds familiar, but-'

'He is the man responsible for exiling your father from the Island. Your father wants the Island back and Benjamin Linus dead.'

'And what has this got to do with me?'

He paused, then continued to pick his way delicately through the conversation.

'This,' he coughed, '_Dispute_ between them, threatens more than you can ever imagine.' He looked at her intently. She was quite sure she wasn't picking up the significance of what he was saying.

'And-?'

'And it has to stop.'

'Right. And you are here because? Look Mr Alpert, I'm sorry if I'm being dim, but I still don't see what this has to do with me. I haven't seen or spoken to my father in seven years, and frankly I try to stay well away from him.'

Richard held his glass carefully, wiping away a mist of condensation at its base. 'Jacob wants you to go to the Island.'

She shook her head in disbelief.

'He believes that the only thing that really matters to your father is you.'

'Well, I'm sorry but this Jacob is mistaken. As I said, I haven't seen my father for a long time. We have absolutely nothing to do with each other.'

'Nevertheless… '

Then realization dawned and she finally understood what he was really saying. 'You seriously think I'm going to volunteer to be some sort of human shield?'

'No. Not exactly. See it more as a form of insurance.' Even Richard Alpert was looking uncomfortable now. 'You can trust Jacob,' he said simply, 'believe me, this is for the best.'

She was looking at him incredulously. 'And I suppose you're here to take me? What if I won't go with you?'

He half smiled, 'You're perfectly free to make your own choice, Miss Widmore. I'm here simply as an emissary. But Jacob did say that if you were uncertain, to tell you that the life of someone you love very much depends on the choice you make.'

'You mean Desmond?' she was angry now. This was blackmail.

'He didn't give me a name.'

'Is Desmond on the Island?' she heard her voice rising, the desperation clearly audible even to her own ears.

'I don't know.'

'But you live there?'

'Yes, I do.'

'But the Island isn't that big, so surely you'd know whether he was there or not?'

'I'm sorry, but like I said, I really have no idea.'

She was sure he was lying. He had to be. She could feel herself stiffening in frustration. 'And Jacob's your leader, I suppose?' she asked icily.

'In a way. Jacob is – well, _Jacob_. He is in charge of the Island. And more…'

She shook her head, flailing around to make some sense of this conversation. 'And why does he want me?'

'He said it was important that you go to the Island.'

'If it's _that_ important, then why doesn't he come here himself?'

'He sent me.'

'Well, tell him to come here and talk to me.'

'I'm afraid that won't be possible.' He got up to go. 'Thank you for your time, Miss Widmore. It was a pleasure meeting you.'

'Hold on. Is that it? You can't just drop that on me and then leave without any proper explanation of-'

'Jacob asked me to pass on the message, which I've done.' He put the empty glass down on the table. 'He also told me to say that, should you decide to go to the Island, when the time comes you'll know how to find your way there.' He gave her a nod, something like a small formal bow.

Suddenly she wasn't ready for him to leave. 'Did you know Eloise on the island?' she asked quickly.

'Yes.'

She paused, thinking this through, 'Were you there?' she heard her voice shaking slightly, 'when Daniel Faraday came to your camp.'

He looked down at his hands, then back up at her. 'He's your brother, isn't he?'

'Yes.' She admitted. 'Did Eloise-' she paused, 'Did she-?'

'She shot him in the back,' he finished for her.

'So it's true.' She breathed.

'Yes. I was there.' He said simply.

'You must have been a toddler then.'

He smiled, 'Something like that.'

She frowned thoughtfully. 'Look, me going to the island, will that stop it happening?'

He met her gaze. 'I don't know.' He looked as if he was going to say something more, but then, with a warmer, sadder smile he was making his way to the front door. 'It was nice meeting you Miss Widmore. I hope to see you again soon.'


	58. Confessions

Chapter 58

Confessions

He didn't think they were Cylons. They were too… funny. Besides, Sharon said she didn't know them. If they were Cylons she'd know about it, right? But then, would she really say if they were Cylons, or would she lie to him? She'd been lying from the get go anyway, so why not about this?

Even so, they didn't behave like Cylons – though given what he'd found out about Sharon and Boomer over the last few days he was the first to admit that he had no idea any more how Cylons were supposed to behave. He'd spent so many hours in that Raptor as Boomer's ECO and he'd had no idea that she'd been a Cylon, so who was he to say what Cylons were like?

It didn't make it easy to tell them apart from humans. All he had to go on was what he saw, and so far James and the Doc had acted like ordinary people faced with someone trying to shoot at them with a gun.

Kind of.

Up to where they started claiming they were from Earth and not recognising the most widespread, popular dish in the twelve colonies. Up to when they couldn't stop laughing at the thought of mine rats pulling carts, like they'd never even seen one before. And no, he didn't even get the feeling they were crazy. They were weird, kind of eccentric, but… but Sawyer had talked about Starbuck and Boomer and Racetrack and said he'd been with them on Kobol and on Earth and he couldn't even begin to think how that could all square up.

As if they'd all found Earth and were there already. Hell, maybe they were. What did he know? He'd had nothing to do with Galactica for nearly two months, and he hadn't slept in three days so right now he'd believe almost anything. Especially if it was something he wanted to believe – like Starbuck and the Old Man were still alive and out there somewhere. And, hell, yeah, maybe Sharon was right and there was an Earth and the Old Man had found it. Why not? If anyone could it'd be him. So maybe Sawyer was telling the truth after all. For all he knew they could have discovered that all the prophesies about Kobol and Earth were true and - Nah. Maybe not. Which meant Sawyer and the Doc were lying about Earth and playing some game with him, which meant they weren't friendly.

And he was so frakking tired he couldn't begin to figure it all out.

They were still all sitting at the table; the Doc taking a last mouthful of the stew, a last sip of water, and now that they had all finished eating the silence was deepening into something more uncomfortable. Sharon was still out of it, crashed out on one of the bunks, so he was alone with these two. Sawyer was sitting across the table watching him carefully - like he was figuring out whether this was a good time to take him out. Helo had his gun on his lap, and he'd positioned himself where he could cover them both, so he hoped Sawyer had the good sense not to try anything because then Helo wouldn't even try to play nice. As it was, Sawyer stayed in his chair and Helo's hand only twitched over his sidearm.

'So why don't we go through it step by step. How did you get here?'

Sawyer stiffened, realizing Helo was done with joking around. Time for some answers. 'We don't know.

'Why don't you just tell me what you _do_ know?' he kept his voice smooth and easy and set himself back a little in his chair so that he could reach his gun more quickly. Sawyer noticed the movement, and his face set hard. A glance over from the Doc who also sensed the danger. These people were strung tight. Good. At least they knew the threat was real.

'Alright.' Sawyer had echoed his movement, leaning back in his chair, legs out. Making himself the target, Helo realized. The Doc was frozen to the spot. 'We was on the Island and we… fell.' Another quick glance from the Doc signalled that he was lying. Sawyer caught her look and adjusted his story quickly. 'OK, so Blondie here was snoopin' around the plane and… we had a… discussion about it and both fell over… into the plane. Someone must have drugged us and knocked us out, 'cos the next thing we're in some store room on Galactica. That was when we met you.'

'You're telling me that you were with Boomer's Raptor before you met me?'

'Yeah, that was what she called it.'

'On Earth.'

'That's right.'

Helo laughed dryly. 'Right, let's try it again. How did you get on Galactica?'

'Which part didn't you like?'

'The part when Boomer had crashed a plane when she was still with me on Gal-' he stopped in the middle of the sentence. Of course. Boomer was a frakking Cylon. There were probably dozens of Boomer lookalikes flying around in identical Raptors. Just like he'd seen on Caprica when Sharon had turned up pretending to be her. But then what about Starubuck and Racetrack - Sawyer said he'd seen them too. Did that mean they were all Cylons too? No way.

'Who else was there? From Galactica?'

'Oh. Racetrack. Starbuck. Then a couple of new guys showed up – Apollo and someone they called Chief.'

He started. _Apollo?_ 'And where were they?'

'On the beach.'

He shook his head. He couldn't make sense of any of it. His head hurt and he was too tired to figure it out. The way this was going, there had to be Cylon versions of just about everybody he knew. That or these two were lying. But talking to them wasn't making it clearer, if anything it was making it more confused, more muddled.

'What were they doing on the beach?'

'Getting shot at by the crazy plane.'

'Crazy plane?'

'The one with the body parts. The one Starbuck came in.'

Helo hesitated. 'What…?' He didn't even know what to ask. 'What was Apollo doing?'

'Shooting back.'

'And then?'

'I don't know. I took off to find Boomer's plane.'

'You took off? Why?'

Sawyer hesitated, glancing over at the Doc before he answered. 'Starbuck said there were guns in one of the lockers. Apollo had taken mine to shoot at the plane, so I figured...' Sawyer shrugged, like the rest was obvious.

'So where are the guns?'

'Never found 'em. Found Blondie here instead. And then we fell in the plane…'

This wasn't getting him anywhere. It wasn't making sense. Apollo and Starbuck were on a beach somewhere shooting at a Cylon plane?

'You know why Apollo and Starbuck were there?'

'They all said they'd crashed.'

'And they thought it was Earth?'

'No. They didn't look like they knew where they was, but figured it was someplace they called Kobol. We thought that was the name of the Island. They was trying to get back to Galactica. Least that's what they said.'

Helo shook his head, frowning hard. 'And when was this?'

'Coupla days ago, I guess, right before we met you. We was out for a while, so…'

'He'd do better to wait for Sharon to wake up. Not that he trusted her either, but at least he knew what she was and she _had_ kept him alive for two months, so that had to count for something.

He stood up abruptly. 'I'm going to get some sleep. I'll be with Sharon, so you want to sleep, you can take the other dorm room.'

And that was it, he was done for now. He'd spent nearly two months running hard, the last two days cooped up in a Cylon heavy raider constantly trying to dodge Cylon Basestars and all he wanted to do now was lie down and let himself pass out.

She was still sleeping, her face still marked by bruises and a small stain of blood on the bandage on her shoulder. She looked just like the Sharon he'd always known. Just like her. He shut the hatch, bolted it shut and lay facing it on a bunk opposite hers, his gun on his chest. If they tried to break in he'd wake up and hear them. Maybe they'd take the plane and run. They wouldn't get very far, seeing as there was no fuel, but at least he wouldn't have to worry about them anymore. That was it, he'd wake up and they'd be gone. Sweet.

00000

'You think we need to take turns keeping watch?' Juliet asked uncertainly, looking round at the tiers of bunks and trying to figure out where she was going to sleep. He watched her impassively. At least she'd stopped cringing whenever he walked anywhere near her, rightly deciding that she was more in danger from the lunatic with the gun than she was from him.

'Yeah. Maybe. If he wasn't delusional about the whole planet Picon thing, I'd say no, he'd have shot us by now if he was going to, but, waddayouknow, he might decide we've turned into man eating rats in the night or something. You sleep,' he said, sitting down on one of the lower bunks and bouncing a little to try it out. 'I'll watch out for him. You hear anything, it'll be me trying to talk him down. Because, let's face it, the only way to stop the guy shooting is to make him laugh.'

She smiled at that. A tired, defeated smile. She took the bunk furthest from him at the back of the room, the only one with a curtain around it that hadn't been ripped from its rail. She sat down on the bed uncertainly. He saw her hesitation, saw the fear creeping back into her eyes. He ignored it and lay on his bunk, his eyes glued to the door. After a long time he heard her bed move and the swish of the curtain. It wasn't dark in the room, but it wasn't that light either. The lights in the whole place were muted, even more so here. He'd shut the hatch door but hadn't been able to lock it. It was warped, like something hot had blasted it. He could see a darker outline of a crack through to the corridor beyond.

He lay there for a while in the silence. He knew she wasn't asleep, he could sense her alert and wide awake.

'Where do you think we are?' Her voice sounded small in the semi-darkness.

'Another hatch. On the Island.' He answered. 'You?'

'Me?'

'Yeah. What do you think?'

'Oh.' She hesitated. 'I don't know, but probably one of the Dharma stations, yes.'

'With a crazy guy.' He added, then paused. 'You ever meet Desmond?'

'Desmond? No.'

'We found this hatch. It was a little ways away from the beach, and inside was this guy. Said his name was Desmond. Crazy drunk. Said he'd been shut in there three years.' He went quiet for a moment. 'You know about him?'

'No. They didn't tell me much.'

'Sure they didn't.'

'You don't believe me.'

'Oh, c'mon Blondie, I ain't stupid. You were one of them.'

'It wasn't like that.'

'I was there when you zapped me with that damn taser and put a gun to Kate's head. Now you gonna say that ain't what happened?'

'No. It happened. But if you look a little deeper, you'll see that in fact I saved your life at least three times.'

He laughed. 'Yeah. Sure.'

'No. Really.'

'OK.' He lay back down, smiling in the semi-dark. 'Number one.'

'You escaped. I found you and I put you back in the cage.'

'That was saving my life?'

'The others would have shot you.'

He grunted.

'The second time on the work site when you tried to break out and I stopped you by threatening Kate.'

'Yeah. That was a hummer.'

'They would have killed you.'

'Not if I'd got away first.'

'Would you have swum across to the main Island?'

He didn't answer, but had to grudgingly admit that she was right. He hadn't even known they were on a smaller Island, with a large strip of sea between him and freedom. Given that, he had to admit that she might well have saved their lives.

'And then the third time was when I killed Danny Pickett.' Her voice was quiet now.

'Well,' he said evenly, ignoring the sense of regret in her tone, 'I'll give you that one.'

She was silent now.

'So why'd you do it?'

'He was going to shoot you.'

'Yeah. I know that. So, what? You came over all sensitive and put yourself out there to protect us?'

She was quiet a moment, then he heard her sigh. 'I was there because Ben had said I could leave the Island if I helped you escape.'

That made sense. Well, no it didn't make sense. If she was one of them, one of the _Others_, then how come she wanted to leave the island that badly? 'So there was me thinking you were a happy little _Other _running about doing what Ben told you.'

She gave a bitter laugh.

'Guess I was wrong then.' He said simply.

'Yeah. You were.' There was another silence while he thought about what she had just said. 'But before that, when you put me back in that cage, why? You could have let them find me and shoot me. Why'd you do that?'

'You think I wanted anyone to die? Why would I want that?' He could hear the hitch in her voice. 'I never wanted this.' She repeated quietly.

'Guess none of us did,' he sighed.

'You think Ben's behind it all?' she asked. 'Do you think he put us in here?'

'I don't know. Maybe. Or else the outfit with the girl in the tub. The metal robot ones.'

'I'm scared.' She said suddenly.

'Yeah. I ain't so happy about it myself.

'Perhaps we could escape. There must be a door…'

'Nope. I looked. All over. There ain't nothin'. No door. No way out. I've been all 'round it.'

'There has to be a door.'

'There's a plane.'

'A plane?'

'The one Helo and Sharon came in. And it don't lead nowhere. That's the only door I seen.'

'Could we fly the plane?'

'Well I sure as hell can't. Can you?'

'No.'

'Don't matter anyhow. Helo said there was no fuel.'

'So what can we do?'

He laughed. 'No idea. Ask me again if we live out the next couple of days.'

'You think he's going to kill us?'

He thought for a moment. 'No. Not if we're smart. And funny.'

'We could try and kill _him_.'

'Thought you didn't like killing.'

'I don't.'

Sawyer thought for a moment. 'He's crazy, but I don't think he's gonna do it. Besides, whoever put us here will turn up sometime. We just wait until they do.'

'And then what, hope that they don't kill us?'

'Somethin' like that.'

'It's not looking good, is it?'

'Nope.'

She was silent then. He heard the rustle as she settled down, maybe turning over to sleep. He lay there in the dark for a while, staring at the crack in the door. She was right, it wasn't looking good.


	59. Breakfast

Chapter 59

Breakfast

Helo woke to the sound of Sharon eating. She must have found the bowl of stew he'd left on the shelf above her bunk and now she was shovelling it in like she hadn't eaten in months. He glanced over to see that she was still in her bunk, sitting up, a rough sling holding her left arm in place. He could still see a thick crust of blood on the bandage over the wound, but it had gone a rusted brown. No fresh blood, which was good. He watched as she registered that he was awake, her eyes flitting to the firearm still lying on his chest before she turned her attention back to the food. 'This is really good,' she muttered, shovelling the food in one-handed, the bowl balanced precariously on her lap.

He'd taken the bunk opposite her, in full view of the hatch door - not that he'd managed to keep himself awake to guard it; he'd fallen asleep right away and sunk into a deep, dreamless oblivion that wouldn't have released him even if a bunch of toasters had burst into the room. Scanning the room, he was relieved to see that everything was the same. No toasters. OK, so technically there _was _a toaster in the room. Pregnant and eating. He still couldn't get his head around it. Thinking of Cylons as machines wasn't really working for him anymore. And Sharon wasn't helping.

He rolled off his bunk, catching his firearm before it fell on the floor, holstering it quickly before he stood up, stretching as Sharon's spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. 'You want more to eat?' he asked gruffly.

She looked up in surprise. 'Yeah. Thanks. I don't seem to be able to eat enough.'

He held out his hand and kept it there a beat too long when she handed him the bowl, stiffening as he felt her fingers brush against his. Her eyes flashed nervously across his face at the contact, trying to read him. He gave her a curt nod and stood back, taking the bowl and feeling all the confused stupid feelings he'd always felt around her. Even as Boomer she'd driven him nuts. He hadn't acted on it because she'd been sweet on the Chief and he hadn't been about to mess that up. But now everyone had their own Boomer - even Sawyer and the Doc on their cosy little Island. It was nothing special. _He _was nothing special. She certainly wasn't anything special. How could she be when there were probably hundreds of Sharons, all identical, all pretending to be something they weren't?

He should be more disgusted.

And he was, when he wasn't with her. No, he was disgusted when he _was _with her. He looked at her now and hated what he saw, hated what he still felt, hated the way he'd been tricked and manipulated. He was only there because she was pregnant with his child and... and she'd kept him alive for months and still looked like everything he'd loved and wanted.

She was watching him nervously. He was standing there, holding the bowl, glaring down at her, like...

'So, we got a plan?' she asked into the silence, clearly trying to deflect whatever it was he was about to do, facing him square on with a determined expression.

He took a deep breath and looked away, staring at the hatch door instead. _A plan?_ Stay alive.

'...Because there's bingo fuel in the heavy raider, so we can't jump anyplace and we're easy targets here...' She paused, waiting for a reaction. He didn't say anything. '...I thought we could probably make it to Picon...'

'No.' He cut across here. 'We're not going to Picon. We'll wait it out here, monitor the com, see if we can make contact with anything colonial. Try and get back to Galactica.'

'Like they wouldn't shoot me on sight.' She said bitterly.

'Well, you got a better idea?'

'Yeah, we go to Picon and-'

'-and run around hiding from Centurions in a radio-active soup? How's that going to be good for the baby?' He was glaring at her again. She was a receptacle for his child. Nothing more. That was the only reason he'd kept her alive, so at least she could take the damn job seriously.

'Oh, right, so getting killed on Galactica is better?' she retorted hotly.

'I'm sure if I explained it to the Old Man...'

'Oh c'mon Helo, start living in the real world!'

'So what, you think we should turn ourselves over to the Cylons? You think that would go any better?'

She didn't say anything, glaring instead over at a spot on the far wall.

'Fine. So we wait here.'

She gave a long, dramatic sigh. 'We'll need to hide the heavy raider.'

He nodded. 'We could move it into the hanger. It'd mean running this place off main power for half an hour or so - and that would put us on the map if anything swung by this way.'

'I could do it in ten minutes tops.' she said fiercely. And here was where she wasn't like Boomer. This Sharon was stronger than Boomer, more capable. Boomer would have folded by now, let him take care of her. Not this Sharon. He had to admit he'd been more than impressed by her flying skills. The old Boomer had been a klutz, every landing a screw up, every decision second guessed. Sharon said they'd made her that on purpose, otherwise she'd have been too good, and seeing the way Sharon could fly that thing he was inclined to agree with her. Even one handed she'd have been a match for Starbuck. Maybe not in a viper, but... but then Starbuck was probably a Cylon too, so... Crap.

He didn't even know who the enemy was anymore. Four days ago it had all been so clear. Four days ago he'd known who he was fighting and why.

'OK, so ten minutes and then we shut everything off,' she was saying, 'make it look like this crate's dead in the water. Then we sit it out.'

'OK. That works.' He nodded, still holding the bowl in his hands. 'I'll fix up some breakfast first.' There was a hollowness about all this, an ache in him that he'd filled with anger but was now draining into emptiness.

This was so frakked up.

'We forgot one thing.' her voice pulled him back. 'The two people out there.' She nodded beyond the hatch door.

'We don't know they're people.'

She looked curiously at him. 'Yeah. We do.'

'So if they were really Cylons you'd tell me?'

She hesitated.

'Yeah. Thought so. They say they're from Earth.'

'But we met them before, on Galactica...'

'You remember that?'

'Yeah. Course I do. Everything up to when we met on Caprica.'

He shook his head in exasperation. 'You're not Boomer.'

She hesitated. 'I accessed her memories, downloaded them, so to all intents and purposes, I am.'

He gave a bitter, barking laugh. 'You're a frakking machine. So we're being watched, is that it? Are all the other Cylons sharing your memories now?'

'No. It don't work like that. It has to be downloaded. I'm off the grid now. They don't know where I am or what I'm thinking. But if I died, my consciousness would download and they'd know everything we've done, know where you are now.' she went quiet. 'But they know already. From what they were saying, the two out there, they were on a Cylon Basestar.'

'And?'

'I don't know. I-'

'So they're plants?'

'Maybe. It don't make sense. Maybe someone's trying to help us. They sent a baby doctor, Helo, maybe-'

'You think the Cylons are trying to help? After they've been trying to _kill_ us for weeks, suddenly they decide to send a frakking doctor to look after you? Real world, Sharon.'

'Not all Cylons are the same, Helo - we didn't all agree. When we saw what happened...' She took a deep breath. 'We didn't realize.'

He shook his head in exasperation. 'It's kind of late now, isn't it? The whole frakking human race has been bombed to frak and now you say you didn't realize!'

'Look. I get why you're angry, but all I'm saying is that not all Cylons are like that, and the two people out there might have been sent to help us. That's all.'

'It means they know where we are.'

'Fine. So we go to Picon, and...'

'No!' He stood there, feeling the anger washing over him. She didn't say anything, but sat there chewing her lip. He could see the tension radiating through her body. He'd scared her again. 'We stay here.' He said brusquely, ignoring her frown. 'I'll go get some more food.'

He unlocked the hatch door and stepped into the corridor, feeling her eyes on him all the way. It niggled him because she was right; if the Cylons knew they were here then it wasn't safe to stay, but Picon was the only other option and how long could they stay on Picon without damaging the baby? They'd already spent over six weeks on Galactica constantly injecting themselves with anti-radiation meds. There was no way he could risk any longer. Maybe they could get down there, try and steal another plane - one with more fuel in it this time round. Choose one that wasn't already running on empty. But that was dangerous, probably more dangerous than the radiation. They so nearly got busted the last time, so nearly got themselves killed, and there was food here and water and shelter and… the two strangers who'd been on a Basestar and claimed they were from Earth.

But if the Cylons knew where they were, then why hadn't they already come for them? It had been over twelve hours, plenty of time for a squad of Centurions to come in and pick them up… Unless there really was someone out there trying to help them. Which was crazy, because Cylons weren't like that. But then Sharon was. She'd saved him, so maybe there were more like her and what the hell happened to make it so damn hard to figure out? But his guts told him Picon was a bad idea and seeing as his brain was about ready to implode that was all he had to go on.

As he approached the kitchen he could hear voices, male and female, Sawyer and the Doc, Sawyer's voice with the same hint of teasing amusement. At the kitchen doorway he still couldn't make out what they were staying. It sounded like '_Jaaarsh og fammmwigh, sheend di fooorash?'_ He froze, listening intently. It _was _Sawyer and the Doc - both at the sink washing the dishes from the night before. The Doc had changed out of her blood stained gown and was wearing a pair of black sweat pants and a shirt she must have found in the bunk room. She was laughing. '_Sheeen di groooosh di bemmunj!'_ The words sounded weird, like nothing he'd ever heard before. He cleared his throat and they both turned. Sawyer spoke first.

'_Hieve, shaaanda scaaana dusssa?'_

'What language is that?' He snapped suspiciously.

'What language is what?' The switch was immediate. Perfect English.

'That language you were just speaking.'

'Um. English.' He saw the Doc's eyes flick warily from him over to Sawyer.

'No, what you two were talking. Before.'

Sawyer shook his head. 'We was talking English.'

Helo gave a short, barking laugh. 'Yeah. OK.' he moved forward with the bowl. 'That some dialect, from where you're from?' he asked conversationally.

The Doc's look was more panicked now.

'Just Earth speak,' Sawyer said smoothly, catching her glance and raising his eyebrows before he plastered on a smile. 'What do you all speak on the planet Zorg?'

'We speak English.' he put Sharon's bowl on the counter and then moved around to examine what else there was in the cupboards. The Doc moved away immediately, Sawyer positioning himself a little way in front of her. 'Breakfast?' he held up another packet. 'Dried beans and potato. Take a while to cook.' He measured out the water, picked up a clean pan. 'So how long you two been married?'

'Not long. We kinda just met.'

'Huh.' he frowned, trying to remember the brief ten minutes they'd met in the corridor on Galactica.

'On the Island.' Sawyer added.

'Love at first sight, huh?'

'Something like that.' Another look exchanged between them.

'You say Starbuck was there?'

'Yup.'

'In a _Cylon _plane?'

'The one with the body parts. Yeah.'

'And then what?'

'Oh, you know, we had campfires on the beach, bit of a party. Got along just fine.'

He shook his head smiling. 'You always such a lousy liar?'

'Can't lie to save my ass.'

They turned at a sound from the doorway. Sharon was standing there looking uncertainly around. The Doc immediately moved towards her. 'How's the arm?' Sharon nodded and winced as the Doc pulled away a little of the bandage. 'I'll need to change the dressing,' she said softly. 'Why don't you take a seat?' Helo measured out the water, one eye on the two women as Sharon sat down at one of the tables. 'Could you get a bowl of water please, James?' Juliet asked and then started unravelling the bandages. 'How does it feel?'

'Stiff. Sore.'

'Okay, this might just sting a little, I'm going to put some of this rubbing alcohol on it, keep it clean.'

Helo busied himself with the food, mixing in the water and heating it on the stove, one eye on Sharon and the Doc the other on Sawyer. 'Thought you'd take the plane and run.' he said to Sawyer.

'Yeah, like I know how to fly. We'd have been out of here if we'd found another door.'

'You'd have been dead if you had. But you're welcome to try it. There's an airlock round the back of the storage deck.'

'Airlock?'

'Yeah, you know, stops everyone from dying when they come on board.'

'Like a submarine?'

'No. We're in space.'

'Course we are.'

'You seriously don't believe me?'

'No. I _seriously _don't.'

'So where do you think we are?'

'I think we're in a hatch on the Island.'

'On Earth?'

'You got it.'

He turned to the Doc. 'And you too?'

She nodded quietly.

Was this some sort of trick or trap? He had no idea. These people had to be kidding him. 'Well, I guess it's your lucky day, because we need to move the Heavy Raider and I need some help shifting rubble, and if you're real good you get to go with me and watch.'

Another blank stare, then Sawyer looked over at Juliet again. She was watching them both, one hand still on Sharon's shoulder.

'Can't wait.' Sawyer said with a forced smile. 'Where we going?'

'Just to the control room. There's an observation window, so you'll get to see it all. Might even get a good eyeful of Picon.'


	60. Picon

Chapter 60

Picon

'Do you think we should go with him?' she whispered, emptying the bowl of blood-stained water into the sink. He watched as the liquid ran out. Funny how blood spread itself thin like that. There was probably less than a teaspoon's worth in that bowl, still managing to color it a vivid red. Sharon's Cylon blood. Whatever that meant.

Sawyer pulled his gaze away from the sink and sighed, casting a nervous glance over at Helo before settling back on her. 'Don't look like he's giving us a choice.'

He watched as she echoed the movement, flicking her eyes over to where Helo was standing a few feet away, still messing around with the pan of food. Every inch of her was tense. They'd all slipped into a weird sort of truce with Helo, an almost playful sparring. But there were hints of something a lot more dangerous. Sure, Helo looked relaxed enough on the surface, but Sawyer saw how his hand never strayed far from the holster at his side, how his eyes were always half on them and half on whatever else it was he was doing. Like now. He was hardly watching the food. So yeah, Sawyer could see why Juliet was scared.

Helo was dangerous.

Not just because he'd already tried to kill him once, but the fact that Sharon was standing there sporting the battered-wife look with a bullet hole in her shoulder was testament to a more worrying side to his personality. Sawyer instinctively moved closer to Juliet, positioning himself in front of her. It looked like Helo was the sort of guy who liked to beat up on women and he wasn't leaving Juliet alone with him. Not because he'd changed his mind about her, it was just that _that_ sort of thing wasn't right. Well OK, he _had_ changed his mind about her. A little. She wasn't what he'd thought she was. And while he couldn't say he liked her - well OK, yeah, he did kind of like her. She was funny, sharp. Kept up with him, laughed at the same sort of things he did - and now that she'd stopped zapping him with that damn Taser thing he could appreciate her a little more.

And those sweat pants were kind of cute on her, the way she'd rolled up the waistband to make them smaller caused him to smile. He caught himself in that thought with a shake of his head. This was all wrong. Juliet was an _Other_ – she was with Ben. She was probably just as dangerous as Helo and he shouldn't forget that. It was too easy to slip into seeing her as a friend and an ally when she wasn't. Not in the long run, anyway. Over the next few days or whatever it took to get out of this hatch, then maybe, yeah, they were both facing the same danger. Right now they both had the same problem; Helo the psycho alien-hater from the planet Caprica.

He was shaken out of his thoughts as Helo banged the spoon hard on the pan and put a lid on it noisily. 'Alright. Let's go. You ready?' Helo aimed the question at Sharon. She was sitting quietly, fresh bandages now on her injured shoulder. She had that same expression - part fear, part nausea - that she'd had since he'd first seen her here. She looked a little better than she had last night, or what he presumed was last night, the damn lights in this place had been on all the time and telling night from day was impossible. There wasn't even a clock anywhere that he could see. He didn't even know how long they'd slept. Looked like Helo had a watch, though, or something, some sort of gadget on the arm of his flying suit. His gaze strayed back to Helo, standing by the doorway now impatiently waiting for Sharon to get her shit together to go with him. She was clearly in pain, wincing as she stood up awkwardly, knocking her elbow on one of the overturned tables. Juliet was there immediately, steering her around the rest of the furniture; all the chairs and tables that were still lying haphazardly around the place. If they stayed here they'd need to clean up some, if only to stop Sharon from walking into everything.

They followed Helo through the corridor off of the kitchen area, past the bunks and into the living space, up the stairs in the corner, slowing while Sharon tried to navigate her way up the winding stairs one handed, then into the big warehouse. Once the last of them was up and onto the big storage area, Helo closed a trap door over the staircase, bolting it down. 'Just a precaution,' he said in reply to Sawyers confused look. 'We don't want everything getting sucked into space if one of the upper level doors is busted or something.'

_Yeah. Right._

Another glance at Juliet, both of them looking more than wary now. He could feel it all bubbling up to some sort of crescendo. Helo was putting too much into this space thing and the contradictions were going to catch up with him any moment and _that_ was sure to make something go boom. His gun, probably. Sawyer had seen it before – guys on drugs, mostly, caught up in some crazy version of reality and losing it when it didn't pan out like they thought it should. But there was no way back now; the trapdoor was bolted down and Helo was already walking quickly across the large expanse of warehouse, Sharon following more slowly behind him. Sawyer took a slow deep breath, checked Juliet was still there, and then followed, feeling awkward and exposed as he crossed the open ground where Helo had tried to shoot him before. He let out a long slow breath when he finally made it to the far end, stopping over at the far corner, the anxiety in him rising steadily as they all stood next to Helo. He was staring intently at a heap of stones pushed up against the wall, like there was something to see there, like the stones meant something.

'They must have made a stand here.' Helo was saying, examining the stones carefully. 'See here?' he was moving around the side 'I'm guessing they had enough warning to build this thing, but even so they wouldn't have stood a chance.' Sawyer moved round to see what he meant. Stones, rocks, and a thin gap, enough room for one person to slip through, then a door to one side and another set of spiral stairs. He hadn't noticed this before, and he could see why, from most angles it looked like nothing more than a pile a stones. The door stairs and the door were well hidded. He moved closer to the hatch door. It was jammed open, stones blocking the way.

'They wouldn't have stood a chance.' Helo was saying again, more softly now, the menace in his voice making it into a low growl. More jaw clenching, then an angry glare aimed at Sharon as if she'd been responsible for whatever Helo had decided had happened there. Sawyer couldn't honestly see what he was raving on about. A pile of rocks. There weren't any bodies, hell, he couldn't even see any blood stains; nothing. Helo was losing it already. Sharon stood there tight lipped and silent, her arm held at an awkward angle that told him it hurt like hell. 'We need to clear the airlock here, make sure we get the place sealed up.' Helo was pointing down to the stones and dirt spilling through the hatch door.

'That's the airlock?' Sawyer asked, purposefully ignoring the exchange between Helo and Sharon and looking curiously at the two hatch doors. They were separated by a small corridor, the one on the far end firmly shut. He wondered where that one led…

'Yeah. So don't go opening that far door or we're all frakked.'

Juliet was standing surveying the scene. She stared solidly at the far door for a few seconds and then bent down and obediently tugged at a large stone. He crouched next to her, helping her pull it loose. 'What do you think?' he muttered quietly under his breath, eyeing the door. For all he knew freedom was only ten feet away. Out of that door and into the jungle and run. Simple.

Juliet followed his gaze and shook her head. 'There's underwater hatches on the Island.' She whispered back. 'He might be right.'

He cursed under his breath. Was it still worth a try?

'Jack tried to open one,' she said, clearly reading his thoughts. 'We both nearly died.' She added.

And that was it. Jack had almost gotten her killed by opening a stupid hatch door underwater. That figured. And he wasn't Jack, so no, he wasn't going to be that dumb. With a sigh he mentally agreed to keep the damn door shut. For now. Instead he concentrated on Helo as he moved rocks, grabbing them and walking them out of the way of the hatch entrance and dumping them in the warehouse. He was surprised when Helo joined them, working alongside. Somehow he'd expected to see him standing there holding the gun. Sharon was still hovering by the stone pile, watching silently. None of them said anything. He racked his brains for something funny to lighten the mood, get the crazy guy laughing again.

'Why don't you go get the plane ready?' Helo straightened, nodding over to Sharon. She didn't say anything, her only reply the way she turned her back to him and started walking across the warehouse. Helo watched her for a moment, his jaw tightening again before he turned his attention back to the rocks in front of them.

'She don't look so happy.' Sawyer observed, noting Helo's jaw clench even tighter when he said it. Helo sucked in a deep breath but didn't say anything, frowning at Sharon's retreating back before turning back to moving the rocks. Whatever was going on between him and Sharon looked like a goddamn train wreck. It took another fifteen, twenty minutes to clear the door entrance and finally they all stood, sweating and uncomfortable, stepping back from the door as Helo leaned forward and snapped it shut, spinning the wheel firmly. 'OK, up you go.' He gestured to the spiral staircase and they both froze. Sawyer shifted uncomfortably as Juliet looked up. She looked scared. Real scared. Up above them there was the faint glimmer of something white, a ceiling or something at the top of the stairs, but that was it. He hesitated as she started to climb the spiral staircase, wondering if he should go first. What was worse, Helo behind them or whatever it was up there? Maybe he could take Helo out, kick back on the stairs or grab him from above when he came out…

A gasp from Juliet silenced his thoughts. She was already up the stairs, her legs disappearing as she stepped off of it at the top. 'Oh my god.' He scooted quickly up behind her.

The room was circular, two chairs with a panel of buttons and switches and above them a large window. It had to be night because there were the stars and- '_Holy crap_.' His eyes fell on the big brown shape that loomed out of the blackness. It was big, brown, huge, round, unmistakable. He stared and blinked but the big brown circle didn't move. It sat there right in the middle of the screen, a perfect brown sphere. And now he could see what looked like craters dotted around it. '_Sonofabitch_.' he breathed softly.

'Picon.' said Helo firmly, stepping off the top step and smiling a little at their wide eyed stares. He shook his head, the wry smile still playing on his lips. 'C'mon, you can drop the act now,' he said before he sat down and started flipping switches on the panel in front of him. 'You like it?'

'I-.' Sawyer was speechless. 'This a simulator?' he asked uncertainly. Juliet was standing silently next to him, her eyes glued to the view out of the window.

'Nope. Real thing. There's Sharon there, look.' A brown shape was emerging from the side of his view, slowly rotating on the spot. 'She'll fly it to the upper deck, once I get the doors open. See her there inside?' The plane slowly moved in front of them and Sharon's unmistakable figure was right there, sitting in the cockpit. He half expected her to give them a cheery wave and complete the picture, but she didn't. She looked just as pissed and unhappy as she had fifteen minutes ago.

'This don't make sense.' he was murmuring, his mind screaming at him that this was all a crazy lie, staring hard at the scene in front of him. He stared hard at Sharon inside the plane, then over at the big brown, stationary sphere hanging there in the middle of the window. He could feel Helo watching him, feel his own thoughts trying to get around this, his mind moving too slow to grasp what it was he was really seeing. 'It sure ain't earth,' he said finally. This planet wasn't the bluey green of earth, it was... browner, looked drier, and there was another planet that he could just see over in the corner of the windshield, and... moons? He counted four. This was crazy. This whole thing was crazy. He looked at the glass more closely. It had to be stuck on. This was some image or something that had been projected onto the window.

If it was a projection, then how the hell did they get Sharon there, her arm in the same sling - he could clearly see the white of the bandage. But no way. No way. This had to be some sort of projected image, it had to be some sort of trick. But then who would bother? And why? 'Would Ben do this?' he murmured in Juliet's direction. She didn't say anything, just stood there staring and then slowly shook her head in a wordless reply.

'I don't know.' She whispered finally.

It certainly ruled out the theory that Helo was crazy. He was either telling the truth – not an option – or he'd been put up to this and was playing them.

'This Ben's idea of a joke?' He said more loudly, aiming it at Helo now.

There was a crackling sound from the radio and he could hear Sharon's voice. 'You there, Helo?'

'Yeah. Reading you loud and clear.'

'OK, get the hanger door open.'

'Roger that.' Sawyer watched as Helo flipped a few more switches. The lights above them brightened. A red light flashed somewhere and he pointed to it. 'Airlock.' he said curtly. 'There's an upper deck for the ships to come in, we'll put the raider in there. There she goes now.' He pointed to where Sharon and the space ship thing were now maneuvering their way to a spot somewhere over to their right. Helo jabbed another button and the whole room suddenly swung round, giving them a view of black with dots of light. Space and stars. Or something. And now he could see the brown metal shape stretching out below them, a shape with edges, angles and a door opening its mouth to take Sharon and the plane that was moving quickly into the gap. Like the hatch wasn't a hatch but a floating space ship or something. Yeah, right.

Crazy.

Crazy.

Crazy.

There was a long silence as they watched Sharon's plane disappearing inside. The radio crackled to life again. 'OK I'm in.' Helo flipped another switch and the big door slowly closed up tight until it was a smooth brown shape again. A new light came on. 'We're waiting for breathable atmosphere now.' he said, pointing to a whole range of red lights. 'This thing's designed for mining ships to fly right in and dump their loads in the storage hanger. Mostly they'd stay in the plane, drop off, then go back to the planet surface. It'll take a while to get breathable atmosphere back.' He stood and stretched, like this was all no big deal. Sawyer watched as the array of lights stayed stubbornly red. 'Why don't you go stir the food? This'll take a while.' Sawyer stared at him speechlessly, turning from him and the red lights, then back out to the view in front of him, the starry sky, the stars, the edge of the big brown planet still sitting there suspended in space. He could still see two of the moons.

Juliet cleared her throat and started down the stairs, giving him a look that made it clear she wanted to get the hell out of there. He followed her down, nearly tripping over her on the last step. She was standing completely frozen, her expression pinched. She swallowed hard like she was about to vomit.

'C'mon,' he said quickly, putting a hand on her back and giving her a gentle push to keep her moving. 'We need to talk.'


	61. Blue

Chapter 61

Blue

'_We need to talk'_?

She didn't think she could talk. She could barely walk, barely make her legs move or let her arms coordinate the sharp turns in the spiral staircase. There was no way on Earth - or _Picon_, or any other freaking planet - that she could make her lips move, let alone string a sentence together. Or perhaps _he _was going to do all the talking. Which was better. But even then she wasn't even sure her mind could wrap itself around the words. She was numb. Her whole body, being, and mind were numb. Stupidly numb, dizzyingly numb, like the world wasn't staying still anymore and the turns in the staircase were starting something that wouldn't stop even when she reached the bottom. She'd come to a grinding halt on the last step, her body and mind frozen to the point where everything in her had stopped moving. Besides, there was nowhere to go. Where was she supposed to go? The only thing that got her moving again was the pressure of Sawyer's hand on her back.

'C'mon.' Sawyer stepped in front, the hand suddenly gone, and with it her ability to move in a straight line. She watched as he easily navigated his way across the small piles of stones and debris. It didn't look like it had affected him at all. Like his world hadn't just flipped out of orbit and stayed there, completely out of control. She took a deep breath and stuck a foot out to follow him, not knowing what else to do. _Thinking _was out of the question, so following him seemed like the only other viable option. She paused when he came to the bolted down trapdoor, waiting silently while he bent to undo the bolts, finally allowing her mind to slowly drift to whatever it was she had just seen; the huge circular globe hovering in space, the aircraft with Sharon inside, her left arm still encased in that sling. She knew that sling, had recognized the way its knot had poked out from under Sharon's chin. When she'd been tying the sling, she'd cursed herself for not doing it better, knowing it would be annoying to have the ends jutting out like that, and of course Sharon wouldn't be able to re-tie the knot herself with only one hand and her teeth. But Helo had wanted to go and there hadn't been any time to do it right, and then there was Sharon in that plane, the knot clearly visible, still sticking out, getting in the way as she tried to fly the plane...

_In space._

The bang of the trapdoor hitting the floor made her jump, her awareness snapping to where Sawyer's head was quickly disappearing as he scooted down the staircase. Another deep breath and she followed him down. She didn't know what he wanted to talk about. She didn't really see what there _was _to talk about. Words didn't really do it. Maybe she could talk about the bandage and the knot and whether or not any of Sharon's muscles were going to be permanently damaged by the bullet wound. But then she didn't have answers to that one. Or they could talk about Sharon's baby, but it was too early for a heartbeat and without any scanning equipment she couldn't say much about that either... but then they were in the kitchen and she found herself automatically going toward the food and taking the big spoon from the counter top to stir it. Hadn't Helo said to stir the food?

Yeah.

She could do that.

'You think Ben's behind all this?'

She paused. Ben. _Ben?_

'Cos this is the sort of stunt he'd pull, ain't it?' Sawyer was hovering, nervously pacing around the kitchen area.

Was he seriously expecting an answer from _her_?

'You holding out on me?' He leant over the counter, trying to get her to look at him. She kept her attention on the food. The bottom was sticking, tiny burnt pieces mixed in with the sauce.

'_Hey_.'

She hesitatingly met his gaze, finding determination, confusion, more questions than she could answer. 'I don't know.'

'You don't know if you're holding out on me?'

'No. I- I don't know what that was. I don't know if Ben's...' she let her words falter and die.

'So that was a Sim.' he said matter-of-factly.

'A Sim?' she echoed without understanding.

'Yeah, like a Simulator-'

'But we saw Sharon, and it was her, I-'

'Yeah, but they could've just transposed her image. They have computers that do that sort of thing.'

'It looked real.'

'It was meant to.'

She chewed her lip, looking round at the kitchen and then the dining area behind the counter. The tables were still upended. All except the one where she'd fixed up Sharon's shoulder. Maybe they should clean up a little, make it easier for Sharon once she came back here.

'You think Ben could be behind this?' he asked again, clearly frustrated by her lack of response.

But what the hell was she supposed to say? Since when was she an expert on what Ben Linus did or thought? She had no idea what was going on in that sick mind of his, no idea what he could or couldn't do. At the beginning she'd assumed he was perfectly normal, she'd had no idea that he'd turn out to be someone who would kill with nothing more than a sick smile of victory. What was she supposed to say? She'd read the whole thing wrong from the beginning in any case, so nothing she said would be worth a damn. From taking the job at Mittelos to drinking the drugged orange juice to not turning around and taking herself right back home when she'd woken up on that submarine and found herself a million miles away from Portland. The signs had been there all the time, she'd just chosen to ignore them. Or not seen them until she looked back and there they were, shouting at her from the past. And then the place had gotten scarier and crazier and by the time she'd realized what it really was it had been too late. Ben wasn't going to let her leave and now it was even scarier and crazier than ever. But nothing new. This was nothing new. The feelings were the same. The reality was the same. Just more extreme.

So yeah, maybe Ben _could_ be behind all this.

The sad thing was that she really wasn't cut out for any of it. She was the last person who should be here. She didn't belong in this sort of thing at all. She'd always been the geek, the swot, the awkward brainy girl at school with the good grades and the lousy taste in clothes. And men.

And now James Ford was standing there expecting answers that she really couldn't give him.

They stood awkwardly for a moment, the bean stew now bubbling away happily without a care in the world.

She frowned at the stew. 'He doesn't like to lose.' She said finally, then hesitated. 'But I don't get why he would do all this this.' she continued, confusion lacing her words. 'Why go to all this trouble?'

'You tell me.'

She could feel him watching her and it made her uncomfortable. 'That room with the robot and the fair- haired girl. That wasn't a simulator.'

'Naw, that was the drugs.'

She took another deep, slow breath and shook her head. If he wanted to believe that, then fine, but they hadn't been drugged. She was a doctor, probably not a very good one at this point in time, but good enough to know when drugs were or weren't involved. 'We weren't drugged.' She said firmly. 'I think that was real.'

He gave some sort of scoffing snort and out of the corner of her eye she saw him turn away. Another stir of the beans because they were sticking to the pan again. Not so happy now, as more burnt bits added to the sauce. It didn't smell so good either. Not like the rat stew...

Sawyer was silent, all his words gone too. She'd shut him up when she'd said she thought it was real. Did she really think that? Did she really think all this was really happening? Probably not, but her mind wouldn't let her sink everything into a theory that was so clearly flawed. It wasn't a simulator and they hadn't been drugged. Maybe that was just the researcher in her wanting to make sure that the whole crazy mess at least made some sort of intellectual sense. And the only thing that really fit here was the crazy idea that this was real. Which it couldn't be because then how had they gotten here? How were they hopping around from one place to another without travelling anywhere in-between? Perhaps he was right, perhaps they had been drugged with something that she hadn't even known had been invented yet. She didn't know all the drugs that were on the market - but then they wouldn't have had shared hallucinations, would they?

No.

Much as she wanted to believe it, they hadn't been drugged. So some of that had been real. And as far as she knew, projected images weren't so real you could actually stand in them and examine them. Not that she'd moved when the woman had lain there in the bath and the metal robot had come out from the corner of the room. Maybe she should have walked all the way around it just to make her point. Next time she would.

'So we gonna eat that or what?' she startled to find Sawyer right next to her, staring uncertainly into the pan, his nose scrunching at the unpleasant smell. 'You sure that's OK to eat?' he asked uncertainly.

'No.'

'Well. I'm starving, so may as well die from that as a bullet from Helo's gun.' He bent down to grab a couple of plates and held them out in front of the pan, wrinkling his whole face in disgust as she messily slopped a ladle-full onto each plate.

'Don't you think we should wait for the others?' she asked uncertainly.

'Nope. Helo said it would take a while. And besides, he makes me kinda nervous. Puts me off my food.'

Sawyer took the plate and sat down, blowing on a forkful before gingerly putting it into his mouth. He chewed for a moment and then shrugged. 'It's OK. Tastes better than it smells.'

She hesitated, then sat down opposite him and took a small mouthful. He was right about the stew, it really didn't taste too bad once it was inside her mouth. The rat stuff had been better though. They ate in silence for a while, Sawyer eating with enthusiasm, Juliet pushing the food around her plate, watching as the goo of the sauce solidified into a solid mass as it cooled. It looked foreign, alien, the way it was congealing. Like nothing she'd ever seen before. Like all of this. Suddenly she really didn't want to eat it, she wanted something familiar, something that tasted and looked right and didn't look like it was changing color when it cooled down.

'James, my food is turning blue.' She stared at the plate in horror, watching as the off-white of the sauce took on a bluish tinge and then suddenly transformed into a bright, vivid electric blue. Sawyer looked up from his empty plate, his eyes widening in surprise. She could see him immediately regretting the fact that he'd eaten the stuff.

'Crap. It's poisoned. You think I should barf it up?'

A low chuckle from the doorway made them turn in surprise.

'You two are something else!' Helo was walking into the room, closely followed by Sharon.

'My food has turned blue.' she said to him, her face feeling numb around the words.

'Yeah. Does that. It's the beans. When they cool.' he explained. 'They reach a certain temperature and it triggers the reaction. Kids like it.' he added, as if that would make it all alright.

'So you haven't just poisoned us?' Sawyer asked, still staring at Juliet's plate.

'Nope. Tastes better cold though, if you can get over the color.'

'Don't tell me, the beans are from Picon and...'

'No. Aerilon. Not much grows on Picon. You saw why. Too dry. Most of it's desert. They mainly mine stuff on Picon. That right, Sharon?'

Sharon was standing awkwardly at the far end of the room. She still had the same expression - the one that said she wanted to cry, or throw up, or run away. The knot was still pushing against the bottom of her chin. Juliet frowned at it. She really should re-tie that-

There was a sudden jolt, a scraping of metal, a shuddering movement as if the whole hatch was being rocked from side to side. Everyone's head snapped up with hers, looking up to the ceiling.

'What the hell was that?' asked Sawyer.

They all turned to Helo. His eyes were wide with surprise and shock. 'They found us?' he said to Sharon. Her eyes mirrored his, more fear there now. 'You scrambled the comm link?'

'Yeah.'

'Then how-?'

'They must have put a beacon on the whole crate, and when you got the main power running...'

'_Frak_.'

'Someone tell me what's going on?' Sawyer asked.

Helo was standing there, not moving. 'That's it, then.'

'We can try hiding out by the control room.' Sharon said quickly.

'No time.'

'Yeah. There is. I encrypted the door, it'll take them a while to get through it.'

A single nod from Helo and the two of them moved as one, leaving Sawyer and Juliet still sitting at the table in the kitchen area watching their backs disappear into the corridor. A moment of hesitation and Sawyer was off after them, Juliet following quickly behind. Up the corridor, the spiral stairs, sprinting across the big wide expanse of the warehouse just as the door at the far end opened and voices were echoing off the walls. Juliet was the last to squeeze through the tiny gap in the stones, her breath coming out in ragged gasps. She crouched down next to Sawyer, trying to breathe as quietly as she could.

'_Check the living areas.'_ A man's voice, then the sound of clanking. She held her breath as she saw one of those huge, gleaming metal robots striding across her line of sight to the spiral staircase on the other side. It clanked as it walked, its head and arms moving all the time, scanning, watching. It had what looked like guns built into the ends of its arms, made of the same shiny metal. She ducked down further, pushing herself into the smallest space possible behind the rock pile. She hadn't had time to get right in and she didn't dare move now. A lot of the rocks were still loose where they'd cleared them out of the way and she knew it would make too much noise.

'_There's no ship. This is a waste of time. If they were here they've obviously gone. We've missed them. Again.'_ The second voice belonged to a woman. Juliet scrunched lower in her hiding place, she could still see a small corner of the warehouse, and if she could see out then whoever it was could see in. Luckily, her shirt and pants were both dark, blending into the shadows, so maybe they wouldn't see her...

A man now, walking across her line of sight toward the stairs. He was dressed in a vivid blue suit, the color of the food in the kitchen. Was the food in the pan still hot or had it all cooled down and turned the shade of his clothing? She didn't dare turn her head and see what Sawyer, Helo or Sharon thought of all this. She could tell by the sounds of their breathing that they were trying to be as quiet as they could. Sawyer was behind her, she could feel the warmth of his arm radiating across to the skin on her back. She couldn't move even if she wanted to, they were all squeezed in so tight.

The woman had moved into her line of sight now. Juliet recognized her. It was the same one that she'd seen in that room, the one with the bathtub in it. The one with the metal robot. She heard a soft gasp from behind her. So Sawyer had seen it too. The woman was moving around the warehouse, idly looking in all the corners. Juliet felt herself starting to shake. She knew that Sharon and Helo were somewhere behind her, probably completely out of sight. Probably. She held her breath, convinced that she was about to pass out from fear or lack of oxygen.

Then it occurred to her that maybe she shouldn't be hiding, maybe this woman was supposed to find her, maybe this was a good thing, and that huge metal machine was-

'_Well?'_ the woman's voice made her jump. She felt Sawyer's hand on her back, stilling her immediately.

'_Nothing.'_ The man sounded exasperated. '_Looks like we just missed them. The food's still warm. Someone's definitely been here. I found this.' _He held up what Juliet recognized immediately as her theater scrubs, the blood on the front of the smock still clearly visible. The blonde picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully.

'_Where did you find this?_'

'_In one of the dorm rooms.' _The woman looked around carefully.

'_Where's the control room?'_ The man was asking, moving out of her line of sight toward the hatch at the end of the warehouse. The blonde was still looking thoughtfully around the space, than walking slowly around the edge of the warehouse, one of the metal gleaming machines clanking behind her like some obedient pet. Juliet watched in horror as the woman slowly went to the far corner, moving into the dark spaces, then back into the brighter area where the dimmed lights were still shining, looking right over toward their rock pile. She watched in slow motion as the woman's eyes slowly roved the edges of the wall of stones, moving right up to her hiding place, the new angle allowing her a clear sight to where Juliet was crouching. The woman stopped suddenly, her head snapping to face Juliet full on as their eyes locked, her expression one of shocked surprise.

Juliet didn't move, didn't blink, didn't react at all, she just met the woman's gaze and silently prayed that all this was just a dream, a hallucination, a drug induced vision-

The woman put her head to one side, never once letting her eyes leave Juliet's, then she moved, changing the angle, looking beyond Juliet and over her shoulder to where Sawyer, Helo and Sharon were hiding behind her. She heard Sawyer's breathing hitch, and his hand tightening across her back.

'_Stand over there.'_

Juliet swallowed hard. The metal robot obediently clanked right to their spot and stood there, facing into the warehouse, its back right up against the stones. Juliet could have reached out and touched it. It was shiny, real shiny. She could even see her own face reflected in one of its legs. And she could smell it. It smelled of engine oil. That slightly acrid, metallic smell.

She couldn't hear anything from Sawyer now. The only way she knew he was still alive was because his arm felt warm through her shirt. She didn't dare turn her head or move at all.

'_Well?' _The woman's voice. The metal thing in front of them didn't move.

'_Nothing. But they can't have gotten far. They don't have enough fuel for another jump. This is such a waste of time. I personally will enjoy shooting her and the human and then watching her getting boxed.'_

'_That model was always weak.' _The woman said with a sigh.

'_You trying to make excuses for her?'_

'_She fell in love. That was the plan, wasn't it?'_

'_You're defending her again.'_

'_I'm just pointing out the facts.'_

A laugh. _'And was it the plan that she'd run off with him? I always said we should have chosen one of the others. Another six. Or a three.'_

'_You think the D'Anna's would have done any better?'_

'_Yes. As a matter of fact I do.'_

'_Well, it's irrelevant now. It's done.'_

'_Yes, and now we're having to clear up the mess.'_


	62. Name Game

Chapter 62

Name Game

Helo was still crouching uncomfortably with his back against the wall, weapon drawn, cursing that he'd gotten them all boxed into such a vulnerable position. He'd intended to take them all up to the control room and make a stand from there, but there hadn't been time - the hatch door had begun to open before they'd even made it across the storage deck, and he'd heard the voices as he'd been helping Sharon through the gap in the stones, intending to be the last one up, to wait at the bottom of the ladder to make sure everyone else made it up OK. But even though Sawyer and the Doc were right behind them, it still hadn't given them all enough time to get up the stairs and into the higher level. He'd had no choice but to hide right there, behind the stone wall, where he was now; first in, unwittingly turning the Doc and Sawyer into some sort of frakking human shield, in line to take any bullets that happened to come their way. He would have changed positions in an instant but there hadn't been time. He'd have even passed his gun down the line if he'd thought that would help, but any noise, _any noise,_ would have alerted the Centurions.

So he didn't do anything, or say anything, just sat and held his breath, cursing himself for getting them all in that position, for choosing to support Sharon while she was trying to run with her injured shoulder rather than making sure the two civilians made it out OK.

He'd done it to make sure their baby would be safe.

Their _Cylon _baby.

Well, _half_-Cylon.

He wasn't sure why he even bothered pretending anymore. He should rip off his uniform and burn the frakking thing.

He'd betrayed everything, everyone.

And he didn't like hiding. He'd never liked hiding. He preferred to fight. And when that Centurion had come right over so that he could see its head above the stone wall, he'd had to stamp down hard on the urge to go ahead and shoot the frakker. End it there. Take one of them out with him. At least that one really wasa Toaster.. It would have felt so good to blast it to pieces.

There was a shudder, the whole building grinding as the Cylon ship released the docking pins. He waited five slow seconds, counting them under his breath. Then stillness. Silence. His body was aching from trying not to move.

'They're gone.' Sharon murmured, leaning right into him as she tried to stand up, favoring her injured left arm. She had her sidearm still gripped tightly in her right hand, the hardness of it digging into his side as she pushed it down into her holster. He instinctively stood up, taking her by her good elbow to help her to her feet. 'Thanks,' she said softly, giving him _that_ look; the look that made him so mad he wanted to bellow at her in fury, the look that said she had 'feelings', that it mattered, that it was real, the look that held the speech she'd been giving him for days now. He didn't believe a word of it. He pulled away almost immediately, ignoring the way the look turned to hurt and then solidified into the familiar expression she'd worn since he'd found out, the pathetic little lost look, the one that he wasn't giving in to, no matter how hard she tried. He sighed, turning his attention away from her and the whole mess between them to whatever it was Sawyer and the Doc thought they were doing down there on the ground.

They were still crouched there, frozen in place, not moving, Sawyer's hand on the Doc's back.

'They've gone.' His own voice echoed too loudly, though he'd spoken barely above a whisper.

'Guess we'd better check the place out, make sure they didn't leave any surprises behind.' Sawyer turned his head slowly to stare at him. His eyes were distant and unfocussed. Helo had seen that look before; he seen it in hundreds of faces, in all the eyes of the people who'd been hit by the Cylons down on Caprica. So it was finally sinking in, huh?

'C'mon, let's go.' He almost nudged Sawyer with his foot, almost forgetting that he wasn't some soldier under his command needing to snap out of it to carry on fighting. This was a civilian, caught up in something too big for him. At least he hoped he was a civilian.

Sawyer didn't move. 'They-' He started speaking, but then stopped again, like the words had just left him completely.

'Yeah, they were Cylons.' Helo finished tonelessly.

Sawyer was still staring at him, frowning.

Helo pulled Sharon nearer to him so that he could slip passed her, trying to ignore the moment when their bodies were flush. Even though his mind told him she was a frakking Cylon his body still didn't seem to get it. He cursed silently under his breath as they swapped places and then he was pushing her away, careful not to touch her injured shoulder, careful not to think that he'd done that to her, that he'd hurt her. Careful to keep thinking that she was a Cylon and she'd deserved to be killed and the only reason he hadn't was because... yeah, yeah. Because she was pregnant. Not because she was Sharon. Not because he loved her. Because he didn't.

Not anymore.

He couldn't love her because this wasn't _her_, this _thing_ in front of him was something else, a machine. Nothing more. He had to keep reminding himself of that. He had to keep reminding his frakking _body _of that. He shook the thoughts out of his head and stepped carefully over Sawyer, still crouching, frowning hard at the ground now. At least the Doc had had the presence of mind to stand up and step out into the storage deck to let him go by.

It only took him a few minutes to check over the whole station, first making sure that the docking bay was secure, then the living quarters, the dorm rooms, the kitchen, the head. From what he could tell nothing had been touched, nothing booby trapped, everything had been left just the same. Even the food was there, the bright blue of the cold beans reminding him of better times, of his mom telling him to eat before it changed color, of the tiny sweetened squares carefully wrapped in his lunch pack for school.

'Well?' Sharon's voice came from somewhere behind him. He turned to see her standing there at the door, her sidearm back in her right hand. He'd returned it to her when they'd escaped from Caprica, figuring that she'd proven herself trustworthy enough to at least attempt to defend them both. She wasn't going to shoot him. He eyed the weapon for a moment and then pointedly ignored it. No, he was the one that did the shooting around here. 'You find anything?' she asked.

He shook his head slowly. 'No. It's clean.' He turned back to the food, slowly cutting the solid blue mass into squares and putting it onto a plate. 'You hungry?'

'I'm always hungry.' He heard the smile in her voice and couldn't help the twitch in his own lips.

'Sit down, I'll bring it over.' He grabbed the plate of food and pulled up a chair opposite her, letting them both share the plate, trying not to look at her as she grabbed three of the bright blue squares and shoved them hungrily into her mouth. He slowly took a square and nibbled it slowly. The beans sweetened as they cooled and he closed his eyes as the taste filled his mouth. 'Where are the others?'

'They're coming down.'

'Guess that gave them a scare.'

'Guess so.'

'You think they'll come back?' They both knew he wasn't talking about Sawyer and the Doc now.

'Maybe.' A hesitation, then Sharon's voice lowered. 'But they'll know if we try and leave. They must have some sort of alarm on this place. We won't be so lucky next time.'

'Can you disable the alarm?'

She shrugged. 'Maybe. But chances are disabling it would trip it off.'

'So we're trapped here.'

'Yeah. Looks that way.' He could hear the resentment in her voice.

'They'd have caught up with us if we'd tried to run for it. We wouldn't have made it to Picon.'

She didn't answer him, her sullen silence telling him everything he needed to know about her opinion on that.

He sighed, the food suddenly looking less than appetizing. A noise by the door signaled that Sawyer and the Doc were finally moving again. He looked up to see the familiar shocked faces. Sawyer still looked practically catatonic, standing by the door and gazing into the middle distance. No wisecracks for once. Shame. He could do with a laugh right now.

The Doc came in and sat awkwardly at a seat around the table. 'Who were they?' she asked quietly.

'Cylons.'

'That robot-' she hesitated. 'It was real?'

He gave a half choking laugh. 'Yeah. It was real.'

'It had guns on the ends of its hands.' she said softly.

He watched her in surprise. Was she serious? _Everyone _knew exactly what a Centurion was, what they looked like and what they did. _Everyone_. No exceptions. The Cylon wars had affected every planet in the twelve colonies, and now this woman was pretending she hadn't even seen one before? No way.

'Didn't you go to school?' he asked her.

She frowned. 'Yes. Of course, but-'

'Then didn't they teach you about the Cylon wars?'

The frown deepened. 'No.'

'That was a Centurion.' He said. 'They're Cylon killing machines.'

'I don't understand.' her voice was shaky, still barely above a whisper.

He was watching her carefully. She wasn't behaving right. She wasn't taking this right. She was acting like she'd never even heard of a frakking Cylon, like it meant nothing to her, like a Centurion was some weird machine without any connection to her at all, no associations with war or death, like this was all new to her. Either she was a Cylon herself and trying to defend them by playing dumb, or she really had no idea. He couldn't decide which was more plausible.

'So... who are the Cylons?' she persisted.

He sighed. How basic was he supposed to go? 'They're machines.' He said finally. 'All of them.' He looked pointedly over to Sharon. She didn't react beyond a tiny flinch, a flicker of hurt joining the hurt already dulling the expression in her eyes.

'Machines.' Juliet was frowning even harder now, like she was really having trouble understanding.

'Yeah. Machines.' He watched more carefully, his hand back to hovering over his sidearm as her gaze flicked over to Sharon and then back to the blue squares on his plate.

'You said Sharon was a Cylon,' she said slowly.

'Yeah. She's one too. _Machine_.'

The Doc glanced up at Sawyer, the clear signal that she was back to thinking he was crazy and now she needed Sawyer's help. One look at Sawyer told them all that he wasn't in any state to respond, still staring at the wall like he was the crazy guy in the room.

'Look.' Helo leant over the table to emphasize his words. 'I didn't want to believe it either, but it's true. She's a Cylon, and the two others you just saw up in the storage deck? They were both Cylons too - human-looking, but still machines. There are hundreds like her,' he nodded over to Sharon, sitting tight lipped and not touching her food. 'Just like her. Identical.' He leant back again. 'Why don't you tell them?' he said harshly to Sharon, ignoring the way she winced like he'd hit her or something.

Sharon's eyes immediately filled with tears.

'Go on. Tell them. Tell them you're nothing more than a frakking machine.'

'Stop.' The Doc said firmly. 'I've treated her shoulder. She's no more a machine than you are.'

He shook his head bitterly. 'You know, I want to believe that, I really do. But it isn't true. She's a Cylon. She's a machine. Those are the facts.'

'Is that why you hit her, because you think she's a _machine_?' Sawyer's voice startled him from across the room.

_Hit her? _He glanced over at Sharon, the faded bruises still visible, the cut above one eye almost healed, but the faint pink of a scar still showing. He gave a dark, bitter laugh. 'I didn't hit her. They did that, didn't they Sharon? Go on, tell them the truth.' He looked over at Sawyer. 'I'm not the bad guy here.'

'You shot her though.'

'Yeah. I did. In case you hadn't noticed, we're at war.'

'With the Cylons.'

'You got it.'

The Doc was frowning. 'On Galactica, they said there were nukes-'

'Hang on, that was _real_?' Sawyer asked incredulously.

Helo shook his head with disbelief. These people were either playing him or were so in denial they'd almost lost their minds. Either that or they really _were_ from Earth. Unlikely, but still... He turned to Sharon. 'You tell them, you tell them if it was real.'

She looked like she wanted to vomit, and took a deep shuddering breath. 'Yeah. It was real.' She dragged in another breath. 'And Helo ain't the bad guy.' She whispered the final words, not looking at him, staring down at the plate in the middle of the table.

'And _you _are a machine.' he prompted.

She swallowed hard but didn't say anything.

The Doc went silent, glancing quickly over at Sharon. She looked like she was about to say something then thought the better of it. 'Why do you think they let us go?' she asked instead.

'Who?' he asked suspiciously. She had his full attention now.

'The people up there.' she nodded up to the ceiling above them, clearly meaning the storage deck. 'The Cylons. She saw us, the blonde woman. The one with the robot. She recognized me - it was the one from that... place. With the tub. The same one.'

He sat in shocked silence. _They had been seen? _'Wait a minute, who saw you?'

'The blonde one. The one we saw before.'

'You know her?'

'No,' she said quickly, 'But we've seen her before - that place with the woman in the tub, she was there too, with one of the metal things.'

'It was Caprica six.' Sharon said quietly.

'Caprica Six? What the hell does that mean?'

'We call her Caprica Six. She was there on Caprica, and she's a Six, so...' Sharon let her voice fade, then paused, her voice stronger as she decided to carry on speaking. 'She's one of the ones I told you about. She doesn't like what's happened. That must be why she let us go.'

'You expect me to believe that?'

'Yeah. What's so strange about it? She must have been trying to help us-'

He shook his head. He didn't know where to start. He had so many questions, questions about the Cylons, questions about how many there were, how they operated, what kind of military structure or resources they had - questions that Sharon, so far, had refused to answer.

'Yeah well, seeing as there are hundreds just the same, what you saw was-'

'Caprica Six.' Sharon reiterated. 'I recognized her.'

'Wait a minute, you can tell them apart?'

'Of course.'

He chewed his food thoughtfully. 'And the other one? The one in the suit.'

'He's a Five.'

'A Five?'

'Yeah.'

'No name?'

'Not that one, no.'

'Did he see us too?' He turned to the Doc.

She shook her head.

'He'd have shot you on sight.' Sharon said tightly.

'So he thinks the war is OK?' Helo asked, his voice laced with sarcasm.

'The Fives don't think much.' She said darkly.

He took all this in. This was the first time she'd really opened up about the Cylons, so far she'd been tight lipped and silent whenever he'd asked her about them, refusing to give him any information at all. Which hadn't made him want to trust her. She'd said she wasn't going to betray her own people, that _that _wasn't who she was. Any other time he might have respected that, admired it even, but not now. Not when it was about Cylons.

'You all have numbers, not names?'

'All the models have numbers.'

'And what's yours?'

'I'm an Eight.' She said the words so softly he could barely hear them.

'So all the ones who look like you are just called number Eight?'

'Yeah.'

Something in him rose to the surface, anger on her behalf, that after all she was nothing more to them than a frakking number. 'They don't care enough to give you names?'

She paused, thinking this one through. 'I-well, we have names, for our cover when we work with humans. So I'm Sharon and -'

'No. That's not your name. That was Boomer's name.' He gave a bitter laugh. 'Can't you hear how frakked up this is? You couldn't even give yourself names. You made us do it for you. '

She swallowed hard and stared at her plate, then took a deep breath and met his eyes. 'I didn't say I liked it.'


	63. Charade

Chapter 63

Charade

Sawyer stood by the door waiting for something to make sense. They were talking about names and numbers, machines and- did the Big Guy just say that Sharon was a _machine_?

This was getting too crazy.

Helo was definitely crazy. Batshit crazy.

Sure, he'd been locked up with crazy guys before - guards _and _inmates - when he'd been in jail, but at least then there had been some sort of order to the whole shebang. Here there was nothing to stop Helo from taking them all out. Except One-arm over there. Her gun was still poking out of the top of her holster, unused and unloved. Why didn't she just go ahead and shoot him? She had enough reason to. Unless she had some weird abused wife thing going on. It had to be something like that, the way Helo treated her. He couldn't stand to be in the same room. Men shooting women kicked him off in all the wrong ways.

He gritted his teeth and sighed, pushed away from the wall and slipped quietly into the relative darkness of the corridor. He hesitated, not wanting to leave Juliet alone in there with _them_, though it made no sense why he was suddenly being so protective of her when there was a good chance she was one of them anyway. For all he knew she'd be having a group meeting the moment he left the room. He needed time to think, on his own, time to figure it all out without anyone else there. He couldn't shadow her 24/7 and it was naive of him to even want to. Besides, he didn't trust her, so...

The route up the spiral staircase was getting too familiar. Even the big old warehouse was beginning to look small. Small and cramped. He was trapped. He fought down the rising panic. Being shut in never did it for him. He purposefully walked across the middle of the open space, taking deep slow breaths, right over to the far corner, to the hatch from which Helo had first come out and shot at him. It was firmly shut now. Shut and locked, the wheel spinning uselessly when he tried to open it. He grunted in frustration, searching around for another way out. There was another door to the right of it, one he'd not noticed before. It was covered with boulders and stuff, big boulders, more than he could carry. He frowned at it. That hadn't been there before - well, the door probably had, but not all the junk in front of it. He'd have seen it. Not that it made any difference. He tried as much of the door as he could reach and it was stuck solid. He growled in annoyance. They'd locked him in this tin can.

Every door he touched was the same. Locked. Even the one to the so-called airlock spun around and wouldn't open.

With another sigh of frustration he let his head drop onto the door and stood there with his forehead against it, feeling his shoulders going limp and a wave of defeat crashing over him. Crap. He hated being locked up. Who the hell had gone around locking all the doors? Helo probably. Maybe with help from outside

He sighed again, then climbed the stairs to the control room to stare out at the view.

The tiny control room was the same as they'd left it. The same panel of controls, the same view out of the window, the big brown sphere of Picon looking still and silent. The moons, the stars, the edge of some other globe off to the side. They'd done a good job on it, he'd give them that.

He stood there a while, watching the scene. It didn't move.

It was still there. _Picon_. Huge and round and right outside the window, like he could stretch out his hand and touch it.

It looked so real.

He'd almost believed it. _Almost_. For a while there he'd felt his mind slipping into confusion, dipping into something that felt like madness in order to understand how this could possibly be real.

_Abducted by aliens._

Yeah, that had to be it.

Took him a little while, but he'd finally gotten a chance to get some perspective, figured out what was going on, given himself a talking to, the one that said the details didn't matter, it was the _facts _that counted - the facts on the ground, not in the air, or in space or wherever. And those were relatively simple: he was trapped, locked up with three other people, none of whom he could trust. There was food and water, air and shelter. Two of them had guns, and one of those was crazy. And that was it. That was what mattered, not whether or not they were on a space station or in a hatch or anywhere else. Of course it mattered in the long run, but seeing as he couldn't figure it out right now, worrying about that detail was a distraction - a crazy-making distraction.

He would concentrate on what was right in front of him and save the rest until something changed or got clearer or someone else showed up to make it make sense. Because it would make sense eventually, he just didn't have all the facts right now, that was all.

In the end it didn't really matter. Whether the theme was planets or Disney, it was all a distraction. The real question wasn't whether or not that was really Picon - though he was sure now that it wasn't - the real question was how to survive. He had to focus on what was important, and he needed to find a way to escape.

Someone was playing him and he had to keep it together, watch and wait. This had all the signs of a long con. Had to be. And he knew how to play them; patience and a steady hand. Only thing was, this time round he was on the wrong end of it.

Someone was playing _him_.

He went through the checklist in his mind; the hatch- they were clearly in a hatch. The robot - well, that was a nice touch, he hadn't known they'd built robots that sophisticated, but it wasn't as if it had done anything except walk around and stand there smelling of engine grease. Then the planet, well, he'd already covered that. Yeah, chances were they were on a hatch on the Island and Ben Linus was behind it all enjoying the show.

And that big pane of glass in front of him was probably a two way mirror. He tried to look past it, to see if there were any faces there, hidden in the darkness of space. He squinted, trying to look past the planet and the moons, frowning when he realized that he couldn't see any faces at all, not even his own. Even the glass was acting weird. It should have been reflecting the inside of the room, what with the dark outside and the brighter light in the control room. But of course it wasn't a window at all, it was some screen with a fancy coating to stop it reflecting his own image back at him.

How in hell had he ended up in this mess? Things had started going wrong the moment he'd killed Duckett. The crashed plane, stuck on the Island, now it had gotten a whole lot worse and he was locked in one of the hatches. Karma was a bitch.

'Don't touch anything.'

He spun around to find Helo standing at the top of the staircase. He hadn't even heard him- that man could move like a cat. Sawyer stiffened automatically as Helo stepped towards him and slowly examined the control panel in front of them.

'Juliet OK?' he asked quickly, immediately feeling bad for leaving her, then rescinding that thought - they'd probably had a nice little debriefing without him.

'She's fixing Sharon's bandages and stuff.' Helo's tone was unnervingly nonchalant.

Sawyer eyed him warily. The gun was firmly in its holster now, but Helo's hands never quite strayed far enough from it for Sawyer to relax his guard.

'Looks like we're trapped here for a while.' Helo was saying. 'So how about we call a truce, huh?'

Sawyer watched him carefully. 'Yeah. Fine.' Of course it didn't change anything. Helo was still armed and crazy and they were still locked in a hatch.

There was an awkward pause. 'You really from Earth?'

Sawyer sighed. The crazy in him wasn't going to go away. 'Yeah, and how about the truce means you stop asking me that?'

Helo nodded once, thoughtfully. 'Be good to know how you got here, who left you here -'

Sawyer shook his head in annoyance. 'Got beamed here by aliens,' he huffed and then pushed past him and down the stairs. He was done with this, done with the questions. Fine, he was locked up with these crazy people; he'd wait and watch and survive until someone slipped up and then he'd get the hell out.

x

'What's this?'

Juliet was busy in the rec room, a bowl of water at her feet, her hair all mussed up and her pants soaking wet. 'Just cleaning up.'

He looked around; the tables and chairs had been set the right way up and arranged neatly around the room. 'Looks good,' he said approvingly.

'Yeah, well, figured we may be here for a while.'

Silence.

She stood and awkwardly blew a strand of hair away from her face. It flopped back immediately and he resisted the urge to reach over and tuck it behind her ear.

x

'The showers are cold.' Sawyer ran his hand through the spray, wincing at the feel of it.

'Yeah, that's what comes of being on emergency power.' Sharon didn't even spare him a glance, concentrating on her one-handed attempt to rinse a cloth in the sink, her attention on the blood slowly working its way down the drain. Her shoulder must have opened up again. Either that or Helo had had another go at her.

He watched as Juliet's nose wrinkled at the sight of the blood, and then as she surveyed the washroom appraisingly. 'I guess we could heat some water in a pan.' She said helpfully.

'Can't you turn the power on?' Sawyer asked.

'Only if you want the Cylons down on us before we could blink.' Sharon said flatly. 'They rigged the place to tell them if the power comes on.'

'And can't you unrig it?' he asked hopefully.

'No.'

Sawyer sighed. Great. A prison with cold showers and blue food. It was only getting better.

x

'Rat again?'

'Thought you liked it.'

'Yeah, well, it ain't blue.'

'You don't get blue food on Earth?'

'Nope.'

'You're missing out.'

'I don't think so.'

x

'Where's Helo?'

'Up in the room with the window. Monitoring the com. He's hoping he'll pick up some Colonial signals before too long, get us rescued.'

'Yeah. Heard that one before.'

'What?'

'_Nothin'_. Bum Island joke.'

She grunted.

'So who's gonna rescue us? The girl with the robot?'

'No. The Colonials.'

'You don't sound too sure about that.'

She shrugged. 'I'm a Cylon.' As if that explained it all.

x

'What is that?'

'Tic-tac-toe.'

'Tic-tac-toe?'

'Yeah. Earth game. Figured it'd give us something to do. That or we could play Charades.'

'Sharayds?'

'Earth game.'

x

'Giraffe.' Sawyer said, watching as Helo poured a generous shot of Ambrosia into his glass. It wasn't beer or whiskey, but it had a kick like a mule and that was good enough for him.

'Giraffe? Small, eats meat. Runs fast. Lives mainly on Sagitarron.'

Sawyer shook his head. 'Long neck, lives in Africa, eats leaves off of trees.'

'They can eat spiny things too.' put in Juliet.

'Yeah, like donkeys. They eat thistles, right?'

'Where'd you get that?'

'Winnie the Pooh.'

'Oh.' She laughed. 'I used to read that when I was a kid.'

Sure, the Ambrosia was helping loosen them up a little.

'OK, here's one. Narwal.'

Helo frowned and shook his head. 'No. Never heard of it.'

'Yeah, maybe kind of obscure. OK. Congar Eel.'

'It's a flat fish, that...'

'No. Urang U Tang.'

'A kind of sheep.'

'Your translation chip is overheating, Big Man.' Then Sawyer laughed, like this was the funniest thing. 'But give you fifteen points for the rat stew.'

They'd been naming animals for most of the meal now. The Doc amused but uneasy and Sawyer feeling like he didn't give a damn anymore and if he was going out he'd go out laughing. And drunk. And yeah, he was funny.

x

'Are you awake?' her voice was quiet, soft in the semi-gloom. They'd figured out where the light switch was, but it didn't do anything, the emergency light in the middle of the ceiling had one setting: _On_. He'd crawled into a bottom bunk and balanced a blanket over it to make it darker. It worked OK but made it airless and shut him in a space even smaller.

'James?'

He sighed. He didn't want to talk to her right now.

'I was thinking we should maybe risk opening that other hatch.' she said.

'The one with the airlock?'

'Yeah.'

'You think that's a good idea?'

'Not really. There's probably half an ocean behind that door.'

'And you still want to open it?'

She huffed in frustration. 'I don't like being locked up.'

'Yeah well, better than dead, no?'

She was quiet for a moment.

'They locked it.' He said finally. 'I tried.'

She gave a sort of strangled laugh.

He smiled back. 'So you buying the space idea?'

'No. Are you?'

'Nope.'

'I guess that makes us both either stupid or smart.'

'Why stupid?'

'Well, if it's true...'

'You think it's true?'

'No.'

'So, smart then.'

She sighed. 'It doesn't explain how we got here.'

'Alien drugs.' he murmured with a smile.

He felt her smiling back from across the room. 'Yeah. That'd be it.' There was a pause. 'You think Helo's dangerous?'

'Yeah.'

'He's calmed down some.'

'Yeah, but he's still got the gun.'

'We should take the guns off of them.'

He paused, something in him stilling completely.

'While Sharon is still weak,' she added.

'Well, then we'd need to either kill them or watch our backs until we get out of here.' He said cautiously.

'We're watching our backs already. Besides, if Ben's got this on camera, it might force him to make a move.'

'You think Ben's behind this?'

'Yeah. I do.'

He grunted. So she'd come to the same conclusions as he had. 'OK. So when?'

'We need to get them alone. Take Sharon first, then we'll have a gun. Then deal with Helo.'

'And then what?'

'We wear the guns.'

'Until they jump us.'

She hesitated. 'You got a better idea?'

'Nope. Alrighty. Tomorrow then.'

He heard her suck in a breath. 'Right. Tomorrow.'


	64. Bionic Woman

Chapter 64

Bionic Woman

_She was on the beach, the sun shining down hard, the only sound the waves lapping on the shore. James, Kate and Alex were standing there by the canoe. She knew they were there, knew they were watching, but she wasn't focused on them, all she could see was Goodwin, his gun pointing at James... She didn't think, she didn't cry out, she didn't do anything except pull the trigger. Goodwin's eyes met hers in surprise the moment the bullet hit, morphing into shock when he realized what she'd done. He fell silently to the ground. Dead. His body decomposed immediately, the flies already buzzing over his corpse, his eyes open and staring, staring right at her- _

Juliet woke with a cry, almost banging her head on the bunk above her as she jerked upright. Her heart was hammering and she could barely breath for the pressure pushing down on her chest. It had seemed so real. She'd been there, on the beach with Goodwin. And she'd killed him.

She let out a ragged sigh, screwing her eyes tight shut, blotting out the image of him lying there dead.

She missed him.

Missed him so bad her heart ached inside of her. Missed his smile, the way his hair fell over his eyes, the look he'd give her sometimes, his hands, the way he moved over her… the breath caught in her throat as she stifled a sob. She'd spent so long being strong; strong for Rachel, strong in the face of Edmund's games, then Ben.

It was two months since Ben had taken her to see Goodwin's corpse. Only two months. And it was her fault he was dead. If she hadn't let herself like him, if she'd been more careful, if Ben hadn't somehow found out-

'You OK?' the voice came from across the room. She swallowed hard, looking over in the dim light to meet Sawyer's gaze. He was leaning around the blanket he'd draped over his bunk, his face the only part of him visible. 'Bad dream?' he asked softly.

She shut her eyes, then opened them quickly as the images flooded her mind again.

'Wanna tell me?'

She shook her head, 'It was just… nothing.' She felt her voice break as she said the words.

'Don't sound like nothing.'

'It's just- I've never killed anyone before.' She said quietly, not understanding why on earth she was telling _him_. Him of all people. Perhaps she thought that, of all people, he might understand...

'He would have killed us.' He said bluntly. 'He would have killed me for sure, maybe Kate too.'

'And that makes it OK?'

'From where I'm sitting you did good. You stopped him.'

'But I didn't have to kill him. I could have shot him in the leg or shot the gun out of his hand -'

'Hey, quit blaming yourself. There wasn't time.'

'Yes. There was.'

He was silent for a moment. 'So why didn't you?'

'I don't know. It all happened so fast that-' she stopped when she heard what she was saying, ignoring the self satisfied snort from the other bunk. 'I just wish I could go back and do it over.'

He was silent for so long that she wondered if he'd fallen asleep.

'It's just something I'll never forget, I guess.' she said into the silence.

She heard him suck in a breath. 'Yeah.'

x

'You ready?'

'I guess.' She took a deep breath, smoothing her hair away from her face. She didn't feel ready.

'You sure you want to do this?' He was eying her crookedly. She clearly looked as unready as she felt.

She sighed. 'I'm sure.'

'Right. You go watch the door and I'll grab the gun.'

'You won't hurt her? She's still pregnant, and her shoulder-'

'It'll be fine. Hell, what's goin' to happen? She can't weigh more than one twenty, what's she gonna do, bite me?'

She smiled at that, but still couldn't shake the nervousness. She liked Sharon, had gotten on well with her, and now it felt like a betrayal.

He must have sensed her reticence because he immediately came up with the counter argument. 'Look, she ain't gonna put up a fight. Expect she _wants _us to take the damn gun off of her.'

Juliet nodded once and followed him into the kitchen area. No time to second guess it now. Another deep breath and they were there. Sharon was sitting at the table, chewing on another of those blue slices.

'Hey.' Sawyer smiled easily, looking nonchalantly around the kitchen area. 'Don't tell me- Helo's monitoring the com.'

She smiled at the joke. 'Yeah. He is.' She got up, scraping her chair as she stood, taking the plate towards the kitchen counter. Juliet took up her position by the door, nervously glancing over to Sawyer and then nodding imperceptibly to give him the all clear. This was the easy part, getting the gun off Sharon. Trying to do the same with Helo wasn't going to be so easy.

There was sudden movement, then a grunt and a yell, and she turned in time to see Sharon's right arm a blur of movement and Sawyer flying through the air and hitting the far wall hard. It all happened so fast, one moment Sawyer had been walking up to Sharon, the next he was in mid air. She stood mutely by the door, her mouth open in shock, noting the thud and the grunt as the air was forced out of him. She stared at him in horror, completely unable to do anything but stand there, frozen in place. He was still for a moment. Everything was still for a moment. Then he groaned and shook his head like he'd been stunned.

'What the hell was that?' She let out a breath when she heard him speak, as he pushed himself up off of the floor, using the wall as a prop.

Sharon had her gun out and was pointing it right at him. 'You come near me again and I'll shoot you,' she said clearly.

Sawyer smiled and shook his head. 'I don't think so. You ain't going to shoot me. C'mon just give me the damn gun. I'll be doing you a favor.'

Sharon's eyes squinted in suspicion and then a shot rang out, the bullet hitting the wall inches from Sawyer's head. 'No closer, mister.' she growled.

Sawyer froze.

'I'm a Cylon, remember. I'm stronger, faster, and I can shoot you into next week.'

He flopped back against the wall, opened mouth, watching her silently.

00000

The sound of the gunshot alerted him. He ran out of the control room, his feet barely touching the spiral staircases, his mind rushing to every possible disaster that could explain that shot. He arrived at the doorway to the kitchen area, breathless, his own sidearm out ready. Sharon was standing by the counter, her gun pointed squarely at Sawyer, a murderous expression on her face. He stood stock still, taking in the scene, noting how Juliet was standing completely still by the door, Sawyer on the ground, his face wide with fear.

'What's going on?'

'He tried to take my sidearm so I threw him across the room.'

He took in the distance from her to the wall where Sawyer was still propped up, clearly in pain.

'You OK?' He asked Sawyer. Was this where Sharon showed them all really what she was, where she turned on them all? And if so, what the hell was he supposed to do about it, shoot her again? He hesitated and then slowly and deliberately put his sidearm back in its holster. No. He couldn't shoot her. And she wasn't like that. And no one was hurt. Yet Sharon was still standing with her gun still pointed at Sawyer, a look on her face that said she was still capable of taking another shot.

'OK, we all need to calm down.' He turned to Sharon. 'What happened?'

'He jumped me.'

'Yeah, well, figured you was the easy mark.' Sawyer growled, wincing as he spoke.

'Yeah, well, you chose the wrong one, didn't you?'

'How the hell did you do that -you got bionic arms or something?'

She laughed. 'I'm a Cylon, remember?'

Helo stood quietly, waiting. 'She threw you across the room?'

'One handed.' Sawyer's eyes never left Sharon's face.

'Seriously?' He turned to her in surprise.

'No point pretending now, is there?' she said bitterly.

'Guess not.' He wondered what else she could do. 'Look, this isn't going to work if we don't start trusting each other.'

'Oh, you want us to trust you now?' Sawyer's sarcasm was still laced with defiance, even staring into the barrel of Sharon's gun. Helo had to admit the guy had balls.

'I thought we called a truce.'

'You still got the guns.'

'And if the Cylons come back we'll have to use them.'

'Yeah, well, don't take a genius to figure it out - it's not as if you've shot at us or anything...'

'I shouldn't have done that.'

There was a tense pause. 'So you saying you're sorry and that makes it all OK?'

'Something like that.'

'She's still aiming the gun at my head.'

'OK, so how about we all put away the guns for a while?'

Sawyer nodded slowly. There was a click as Sharon put the safety back on and the gun back in her holster.

'And I thought you was the dangerous one.' muttered Sawyer, climbing slowly to his feet.

'Yeah, well. Told you she was a machine.' Helo said simply.

'Funny how I didn't believe you.'

x

'How strong are you?'

Sharon sat in the dorm room glaring daggers as she tried to clean her firearm, wedging it between her knees so that she could get the cloth into the barrel with one hand. He sighed and took it off her, ignoring her look of protest. He sat down on the bunk opposite, running the cloth through the barrel. 'So. How strong?'

She sighed. She was still mad, he could see that.

'You threw him across the room with one hand.' He prompted. 'What else can you do?'

She shrugged. 'It ain't that different. I ain't a monster.'

'No one's saying you are. I just want to know what you can do.'

She chewed on her lip, staring over at the far wall. 'I thought he was going to hurt the baby.'

'I'm not saying you did anything wrong-'

'So what are you saying?'

'I want to know what you _are_. One moment you're Boomer and the next you're... _this_ - what the hell do you expect?'

She flinched at his tone, still staring at the wall. 'I can run faster than you, go for longer than you, I'm stronger, can see better, shoot better, fly better.'

'But you still puked your guts out when you were first pregnant. Was that real or another act-'

'That was real. And I bleed too.' she added. Another long pause. 'And I feel pain. I ain't that different from you.'

00000

'Well, that didn't go so well.' She said, staring at the door, clearly hoping that Helo and Sharon were going to stay away.

'How the hell were we supposed to know she'd turn into some sort of bionic woman?' He flopped down onto the bed with a groan.

'Bionic woman?'

'Yeah, like the Bionic Man only she's a woman.'

Juliet couldn't help but smile. 'I used to love that show.'

'Six Million Dollar Man.' he said without hesitating.

'Maybe we're in some sort of movie set - like a reality TV show or something.'

'Right. And there's a huge paycheck waiting for us...'

'This is all so crazy.'

'Glad you're still laughing, Blondie, 'cos I sure ain't.'

'You in a lot of pain?'

'Naw, I just like groaning like this.'

'You're lucky you didn't break anything. Here, let me take a look at your back.' She expected some sort of smart ass comment from him, but he stood up stiffly and dragged his shirt over his head without saying a word, revealing a huge bank of bruising all the way down his back.

'Owch.' She murmured.

'Yeah. Hurts like a bitch. I still don't get it. How the hell did she do that?' he asked.

She ran her eyes over his back without touching it. 'Stress, maybe, you hear of people picking up cars and doing things they wouldn't ordinarily be able to do.'

'That's your medical opinion?'

'Of course.'

'Some Doc you turned out to be.'

She laughed, pressing lightly on the bruising already coming up on his back. 'I don't think there's anything broken, but it's going to hurt for a while.' She took her hands off quickly, looking away, keeping it professional. She could see why this guy seduced women for money.

He was slowly pulled his shirt back on. 'You know he still thinks she's a machine.'

She focused back on his words. 'Yeah. I heard that. Maybe she really _has_ got a bionic arm and he's kidding with her.'

'Can they do that – make arms that strong?'

'Not as far as I know. But it's not my field.'

'I don't get how he says she's a machine and still thinks she's pregnant.'

'You think he really believes it?'

'I don't know.'

'I thought he was acting.'

'That shot in her shoulder was real.'

'Yeah, but she might have gotten shot and then Ben put her in here, knowing I'd treat her and want to help.'

He grunted in agreement. 'Apart from all the crazy stuff, Helo seems like a smart guy. It don't add up.'

'You said yourself it wasn't supposed to.'

He looked at her sideways. 'How do I know you ain't with them?'

She hesitated, then sighed. 'You don't. I guess that's the point though, isn't it? That none of us can trust each other? That's how Ben likes it. It puts him in control.'

He stood silently for a while, watching her until she began to wriggle uncomfortably.

'I got your back, you know that?'

She felt the tears prickle the insides of her eyes.

'Just so you know.' He added.

'Thanks.'

They were silent for a while.

'This is messed up, isn't it?' She said softly.

'Yeah. Guess we'll be getting our own dinner tonight.'

x

'Who's Goodwin?'

She froze, her mind reeling out of sleep like she'd had a bucket of cold water thrown over her. She gasped in a breath.

_Goodwin?_

'Cos that's twice now.'

'Twice?'

'Yeah. In your sleep. You must dream about him. A lot.'

She felt the breath tighten in her chest.

'Someone you're with?'

'He's dead.' she said quickly before the conversation could go any further.

A short pause. Not short enough. 'How'd he die?' Of course Sawyer would go there, would sense there was something there, something she didn't want to talk about.

'Ben got him killed.'

'Ben? So Goodwin was on the Island.'

She hesitated. 'He was married to someone else,' she admitted quietly.

'And what, she got Ben to kill him?'

'No. She warned me. She didn't want him dead.'

'But Ben did.'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'He said I was his.'

'Ben said you was his?'

'Yeah. And looks like he meant it. He took me to see Goodwin's body. He got one of the plane crash survivors to kill him.' she said softly.

There was a pause. 'How?'

'I don't know. There was a stake through him. That's all I know.'

There was a silent pause for a beat. 'You know who killed him?'

She dragged in a deep ragged breath. 'Someone called Ana Lucia.'

She heard him swear softly and then silence. That was the end of the questions, then. Relieved, she turned over and tried to go back to sleep.


	65. Crowbar

Chapter 65

Crowbar

In the end it had been the nightmares that had made Sawyer trust her. Her nightmares, that is, not his. And not exactly trust her, that was too strong a word, but at least decide that there was enough there for them to form some sort of temporary alliance. He didn't want three on one. Two on two at least evened the odds, even if the other two were armed and one of them had some sort of bionic prosthesis clamped to her right arm. Not that he'd seen it, the girl still looked stick thin, but maybe it was wired inside her uniform or something. Hell, he didn't know. One thing for sure, he and Juliet did not have the advantage here at all.

At least now the group 'truce' seemed to involve _not _meeting Helo or Sharon - which, for such a small place, was impressive. Helo spent most of his time up in the control room watching the flashing dials, and Sharon was either with him or locked up in their dorm room. It was tense and awkward and he spent the next few days waiting for the other shoe to drop, for one of them to crack and start shooting again or for some other disaster to fly in and crap all over them.

But for five days it had been strangely quiet.

He and Juliet had kept themselves busy cleaning the place up. Not exactly his idea of a good time, but Juliet was on a mission and he figured they were safer if they stuck together. Besides, there was nothing else to do, and whatever she was, Juliet was surprisingly good company.

x

She was standing by the shelves in the restroom, having finished scrubbing out the stalls with some cleaner she'd found in the kitchen cabinets. She was silent and still, staring at something in her hands.

'What's that?' he moved closer, wiping his hands on the cloth he'd slung over his shoulder.

'It's a pregnancy kit.'

He peered over her shoulder. Sure enough, there it was, small, thin as a pencil, brand new and still wrapped.

'It was on the shelf.' She nodded to a line of metal shelving bracketed into the wall. He looked to where there was still soap and bottles of shampoo, then back to the small pen-shaped object in her hand.

'Guess Ben thinks of everything.' He said wryly.

'You think he planted it here?'

'Course.'

'For Sharon or for us?'

He grinned. 'Unless there's something you ain't tellin me'

She flushed slightly, butignored his comment. 'Do you think Sharon's really pregnant?' She turned to face him then, her eyes a bright, bright blue. How the hell did anyone get to have eyes like that?

'You're a doctor ain't you? Can't you just tell?'

She smiled at that. 'It's science, James, not magic. And this early on, no. Not without medical equipment.' She frowned. 'If she's not pregnant, what do you think Helo will do?' she asked quietly.

'Why would he do anything? This ain't real. Hell, I bet that _test_ ain't even real.'

She looked closely down at it, turning it over thoughtfully in her hands. 'It isn't a brand I've ever seen.' She stared at it for another long moment, then put it back carefully on the shelf.

'So why'd they put it here?' He asked.

'Maybe it's not aimed at us. Maybe he's playing with Sharon too. Or Helo.'

'Naw. Helo has to be in on it.'

'So maybe Sharon isn't.'

'With her fake bionic arm-'

'That had to be real or you wouldn't have ended up on the other side of the room.'

He stopped and thought about that. He hadn't reckoned on Sharon being fooled as well. But no. No. 'Look, she was on the Island with half her face blown off, then she turns up on that ship and her face was fine.'

Juliet sighed. 'It's just... she must be a great actor then.'

'They both are.'

She sighed again, running her hand wearily through her hair, like this was the most exhausting thing that could ever happen to her, like she was ground down to her very bones. She wasn't faking it, he was almost certain of that now. Sure, she could be stretching the truth some, but at her core she was as scared and confused as he was. They'd been here five days now and he'd been watching her carefully for any signs that she was putting up a front. And after all the years he'd spent sifting through other people's lies, from what he'd seen of her, Juliet was the real deal.

x

'Looks like she found the pregnancy test.'

Juliet looked up from the locker she was trying to break into. There were five in their dorm room, the locks solid and unyielding.

'It's gone then?'

'Yeah. Unless she washed her hair with it. Guess Helo likes the result, they were almost sitting in each other's laps in the rec room just now.'

He saw how she couldn't help but smile.

'Here, try this.' He leant down and proudly handed her the long metal wrecking tool he'd found under some of the rubble.

'Where did you get this?'

'Found it buried up in the warehouse. Thought it might be useful.'

'What were you planning to do, wave it at them?'

He smiled and shrugged. 'Open lockers with it I guess. You need help with that?'

'No. I want the satisfaction of ripping the door off of it myself.'

He shook his head and laughed.

x

'You found a book?' he asked, almost reverently. 'Where?'

'In one of the lockers. And I didn't just find one book. I found five...' she waved a handful of them in the air in front of his face.

He startled them both by grabbing her in an awkward embrace and twirling her around. 'You are somethin' else.' A quick kiss on the cheek and he ignored the urge to go back and grab her for another round. He did notice how breathless she was after it, and really wished that she hadn't looked quite so flushed. He was getting enough ideas already, and having to share that dorm room with her every night… Would help if she was bone ugly, but she wasn't, and if anything, seemed to be getting easier on the eye by the day.

x

'So what's it about?'

'Some guy on Picon who-'

'_Picon_? You serious?'

'Yeah. Crazy, huh? It's good though. Thriller.'

'Let me see.'

He silently handed over the book.

'They wrote a book for us?'

'Yeah. They got Cylons in it too. It's set in the Cylon war.'

She picked up another from the pile and started reading. 'Maybe there are clues in the books. That's the sort of thing Ben would do.'

He nodded. He hadn't thought of that. Of course he knew she was smart, but he couldn't help the ripple of pride he felt when she'd come up with that one. Hell, he was losing it. This place was making him crazy. She was making him crazy. Ben had probably handpicked her and fed him some sort of potion in that blue food that made him feel the love for everyone in this place. Excepting Helo and Sharon of course. No love lost there.

x

'You finished that one yet?'

'No. Don't tell me you've read them all?'

'Well, yeah.'

'You should have slowed down, enjoyed them more.'

'Thought we was looking for information.'

'Yeah, but what's the rush?'

He shifted uncomfortably. 'Fine. I'll read 'em again. Slow.'

She laughed and shook her head.

'What the two lovebirds doin' anyway?'

'Lovebirds?'

'Didn't you see 'em? All gooey eyed in the kitchen?'

She looked up at him. 'Seriously?'

'All started after that pregnancy test went MIA. Think that had somethin' to do with it?'

'Pee on the stick and fall in love?'

'That some kinda doctor joke?'

'No. Doctor jokes are far, far worse.'

x

His peace offering was another bottle of Ambrosia. They'd found it stashed at the back of one of the newly opened lockers in their dorm room. Well, they'd found five bottles of the stuff, but he wasn't telling Helo that. A bottle of Ambrosia and a deck of what looked like playing cards - though they were hexagonal and the patterns on them weren't familiar to him. He brought the cards and the liquor and put them on the table in front of him, watching with satisfaction as Helo's eyes immediately left his food and widened with surprise. He flicked an uncertain gaze over to Sharon before looking up to Sawyer with a half smile and a glint in his eye. 'That for me?'

'I'll let you have one shot.'

'Just the one?'

'Shot for a shot. Then we're even.'

'If I remember, I shot you a more than once.'

'Yeah. But you missed, so you only get one go at this.'

Helo shook his head. 'You're some ballsy joker, you know that?'

Sawyer raised his eyebrows at the expression and shook his head. 'Just stuck in some prison with a crazy guy.'

Helo leaned back and examined him closely. A beat. Two beats, then Helo pushed his plate away and reached for the card deck. 'You want to play?'

Sawyer eyed Sharon suspiciously. She was still wearing the gun and still glaring at him every time they came across each other. She was glaring at him right now. He ignored it and turned back to Helo and the hexagonal cards. 'Sure.'

'You know how to play Triad?'

'No.'

'OK, fine. I'll teach you. You get the shot glasses.'

He heard a scrape as Sharon got up from the table and left the room.

x

'What you guys playing?'

'Alien poker.'

'Poker?' Helo frowned and paused, holding the card he was dealing in mid-air.

'Earth game.' Sawyer clarified.

'Those really are playing cards?' Juliet pulled up a chair and sat down.

'Supposed to be.'

Juliet grunted in surprise. Her hair was still wet. She must have been taking a wash or something. On her own. Scratch that thought. He had to stop this. It wasn't helping.

'OK, so how do you play?'

'You know how to play poker?' Sawyer asked her.

'No.'

'OK, well, it wouldn't have helped any 'cos this ain't the same.'

'So why'd you ask?'

'Just wonderin' '

x

'Can you do that?'

'Yup. Full colors. What you got?'

Sawyer hesitated, then laid out his cards on the table in front of him. Helo peered over. 'Three on a run.'

'So you won?'

'Oh yes.'

'You're makin' this up.'

'Ask Sharon. It's all legit.'

'Sharon ain't talking.'

'No.' he paused. 'She's just really protective over the baby.'

'So she don't talk for five days?'

He sighed. 'She feels betrayed.'

'Yeah. Don't we all.'

'Look. This isn't easy for her.'

'You serious?'

Helo shrugged.

There was a long awkward silence.

'C'mon. Pay up.'

Sawyer handed over another shot of Ambrosia. 'Fluke,' he complained as Helo knocked it back in one gulp, setting the glass back down on the table with a satisfied smack of his lips.

'That's right, I'm the luckiest man alive.'

'Yeah, the one with the machine for a girlfriend.'

He froze as Helo immediately stiffened, his eyes taking a careful route to where Helo's hand was twitching into a fist. At least he'd put the goddamned gun away.

Perhaps the Ambrosia hadn't been such a good idea after all.

x

'You got another one open?'

'Yeah, from Helo and Sharon's room.'

'Are you insane? You broke into a locker in their room?'

'Yeah.'

'Why?'

She shrugged. 'Just bored, I guess.'

'You're playing a dangerous game there, Blondie.'

'What they going to do, kill us over a couple of books?'

'No. Kill us because we went in their room.'

'Yeah. Well. Helo found me and he didn't kill me.'

He stared at her, speechless. Then frowned. 'And what else you ain't tellin' me?'

'He got the crowbar.'

He groaned. That had been their only advantage. 'You mean I lost half a bottle of Ambrosia trying to get him onside and you was in their room opening their lockers with a crowbar?'

She chewed her lip and then nodded. 'I got three more.' she said hopefully, waving the books in front of him like some sort of victory hand jive.

He sighed and snatched them out of her hand. 'Way to go, Blondie.' he muttered. 'Next time you tell me before you do something dumb, OK?'

She smiled and turned her face away.

He stared at the books and then at the broken door to their room. He wasn't going to sleep wondering if Helo was going to lose it again. 'Guess I'll go talk to him.' He sighed.

'Don't give him the books.'

He shook his head in disbelief. 'You on the crazy juice or somethin'?'

She bent down to one of the lower lockers. 'I found some clean clothes.' she said triumphantly, holding up some sweat pants and a tank.

'From their lockers?'

'Since when did you care?'

'Since they got the guns.'

'Helo said Sharon didn't want them.'

'So he's still talkin'?'

'Well, he seemed pissed about the crowbar, but-'

'What else you got in there?' He leant down to look. She was still crouched down, and he couldn't help brushing his face on her hair, couldn't help the way he breathed in the scent of it. It was intoxicating. She was intoxicating. OK, so the Ambrosia had something to do with it. Intoxicating liquor was spreading its magic around a little too wide tonight. She turned back to him in surprise, their faces suddenly too close.

'That the shampoo?' he asked, to stop himself doing anything more dumb than sticking his nose in her hair. 'Smells good.'

'There's more left if you want to use it.'

'No. Smells good on you.'

'Are you drunk?'

'As a skunk.'

She grimaced and edged away, standing up quickly and scuttling over to her bunk.

He resisted the sigh that was already forcing its way out of him and turned to his own bunk, crawling in and quickly hiding behind the blanket curtain. This place was turning into all shades of hell.


	66. Reimagined

Chapter 66

Reimagined

Another night. Another set of nightmares. She was beginning to dread the nights. There was too much time to think then, too much time for it all to pour out of her in her sleep, taunting and torturing her dreams. It was like all her terrors from the last three years were rushing back to kick her in the guts in her sleep. And let's face it, the last three years had been pretty bad, and even before that there'd been the stress of Rachel's illness, Edmund's death - god, he'd even died in front of her. She'd almost forgotten until he'd started showing up in her dreams with Goodwin's face and-

Goddamn it. Sleep. She needed to sleep.

x

It had to be late. The middle of the night or something. She hated having no clocks, no way at all to tell the time, no difference between night and day, light and dark, just the constant dim light glowing on the ceiling. Helo and Sharon seemed to have some way of telling the time, because the lack of day and night didn't seem to bother them and they somehow knew when to disappear into their dorm room even when they were in completely different areas of the hatch. She and Sawyer had taken to using them as a crude clock. When Sharon and Helo went to bed, it was night; daybreak was signalled by their voices outside the broken hatch door. It worked at a very basic level, but didn't help in the middle of the night when the hours dragged and she just wanted to look at a clock and know what the freaking time was.

'You awake?' Sawyer's voice.

Did he ever sleep? He always seemed to be awake when she was. Either he was an incredibly light sleeper or her nightmares woke him too. She sighed and looked up. 'Yeah. I'm reading.'

She saw his face appear from behind his blanket, his surprised expression telling her that he hadn't realized she'd been awake for a while. She'd sat up as quietly as she could, consciously trying not to waken him so that she could readcross-legged on the bedHe squinted over at the title. 'Ah. _Escape from Picon_. That was a good one.'

She couldn't help but smile. She knew he'd already read it twice.

'Helo said you'd gone right up to him and told him you could open those damn lockers.' He said unexpectedly. Then a pause. 'He said you'd asked him if he wanted you to do it. That right?'

She chewed her lip. _Busted_. 'Yeah.'

'That's not what you told me.'

She hesitated. What was she supposed to say to him? That it'd scared her when he'd showed up with that crowbar, that she could see it all going to shit once Helo and Sharon found out they had it, that the new paranoid Sharon would have probably shot them both for real this time, and any hard won truce would have been out the window once the crowbar was discovered. Shehe was tired, too tired, and hadn't wanted to fight with Sawyer, but had been scared enough and desperate enough to get the crowbar out of the action without it all getting ugly again. Sawyer was a lot braver than she was. Or dumber. And if he knew she'd given away the damn thing he would assume she was on the other side, and not watching his back. The crowbar had been a really bad idea from the start, only good for opening lockers and now they were done with the lockers it was better to let Helo vanish it.

But she hadn't told Sawyer any of that and she'd hoped he wouldn't find out. She'd always been lousy at long term manipulations. The fact that she was even here was testament to that. Besides, Sawyer was too close, watching her all the time. He unnerved her, and OK, part of her had enjoyed the game, enjoyed his horror at the thought of her going in there like a ninja thief, and pretending to be bolder and braver had felt good. She kept her eyes on the book, but she could feel him watching her, waiting for her to answer. 'I'm tired of being scared.' she saidfinally, not wanting to lie to him outright, but hoping that was enough of the truth to at least keep him onside.

He was silent at that, and she risked looking over at him. He was still facing her, still watching her that way, still looking too hard inside of her. She shifted uncomfortably and pretended to go back to reading the book. She heard the rustle of the blanket as he moved on the bed. She didn't look up.

'You think lying to me is gonna help us?' he said, a tight edge to his voice.

'Says the master of lies.'

'_What_?'

'I've read your file, James You can't talk to me about lying.'

'You serious?'

She chewed her lip and stared hard at the book. He was right, of course. They were wading through lies and confusion already without her spreading even more around. But she was tired of watching every word and gesture and having to double guess everything she did and said. And tired of him; the way he looked, the way his shirt was all over the place, of seeing too much of his chest, his jeans down too low on his hips, that dimple when he smiled... and she couldn't believe the way her body was falling for it. She could barely draw breath when he stood near her, could hardly think straight. It wasn't like her at all.

'Look.' she heard him clear his throat awkwardly. 'I'm sorry 'bout what happened - to Goodwin.'

She froze, glancing over to see him leaning up on one elbow, staring at her, his blanket curtain thrown over the top bunk. She looked away. She didn't want to talk about it anymore. He unnerved her when he watched her like that. She wanted to be invisible. She kept her expression neutral and didn't say anything.

'I just- hell, you should know. Me and Ana Lucia, we, _you know._'

She paused, frowning. '_You know?'_

'Yeah.' He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

'You mean you slept together?' she kept her voice as deadpan as her face.

'Well, not a whole lot of sleepin'.' He twisted his head down away from her. 'Turns out she was only after my gun.'

She snorted sarcastically and almost dropped the book.

'Hey, don't make this harder.'

'Your _gun?' _she repeated. 'And did she get it?'

'Yeah. She did.'

'And you're telling me this because...'

'I wanted you to find out from me.'

'_Oh_.' She was silent for a moment. Something didn't add up. She had no idea why he was telling her this. Unless... 'You think I'd find out from her?'

'No. She's dead so she ain't talkin'.'

'She's dead?'

'Michael killed her, shot her when he busted Ben out of the hatch.'

She stared down at the book in her hands, not even seeing the words on the page. When she looked up she saw that Sawyer was watching her again.

'You OK?'

She sucked in a deep, unsteady breath, dragging her eyes away from him. He'd taken off his shirt to sleep and she could see his bare chest, the muscles moving as he leant on one arm. And now he was talking about Goodwin, and the woman who had killed him, and he'd slept with her. She could feel herself spinning out of control.

'You OK?' he said again, his voice softer now. She wasn't going to look at him. She blinked back the tears, annoyed that she was letting this get to her.

'So you knew her?' She took in another deep breath.

There was a long silence. 'Yeah,' he said finally, reluctantly. 'Some. And mostly in the Biblical sense, you know...'

Another long silence. She tried to get her head around the thoughts and the feelings crawling around inside of her.

x

For some reason she'd assumed it would make her feel better, that Ana Lucia Cortez's death would wipe out some of the grief she felt over Goodwin. And she'd assumed that she wouldn't find someone else as attractive, not so soon, and certainly not someone like James Ford. But almost the exact moment she realized the pull towards him he throws this at her. And knowing what Ana Lucia Cortez had done... She felt herself crumbling.

She had no idea what had really happened, but it couldn't have been anything Goodwin had done. He was a good man. Of course the whole situation had been manipulated by Ben, so anything was possible, but even so, Ana Lucia Cortez had killed him, probably in cold blood, and that had been enough for her to hate the woman. And to want her dead. And now she was.

_Dead_.

Ben had destroyed another life. More waste. It didn't cancel anything out. It didn't bring him back. It didn't even make her feel any better.

'What was she like?' she said suddenly. It had been haunting her all night, lying there thinking about it, thinking about Sawyer, about him and _her._ She didn't even know what she looked like, but... she wished he hadn't said anything, wished he hadn't brought her into this, brought her _here_ of all places, right to the front of her mind. She wished she hadn't known anything.

'What was who like?'

Of course he knew damn well. She'd heard him lying awake as well. He hadn't been sleeping either, sighing and turning restlessly, his bare chest screaming murder at her until she'd wanted to climb out of her bunk and sink her nails into his skin and scream at him. Because Ana Lucia - the _dead _Ana Lucia - owned him now; _she_ had touched him, _she _had blasted into this space between them and taken up position. The dead woman was now very much alive.

And he'd slept with her. Hell, she knew he'd sleep with anyone. _Anyone._ No matter if they killed the one person she loved, destroyed the only good thing that...

'Look, maybe I shouldn't have said nothin'-'

'It's fine.' Her voice sounded razor sharp, a brittle sharp edge.

'No. It ain't.' Oh he was smooth. Too smooth. And she hated him for it.

'So tell me what she was like.' She said firmly.

'You sure you want to do this?'

'Yes.'

'Fine. OK, she was young, smart, kind of angry, hot... ex cop. Feel better now?'

'No.'

'Didn't think so.'

'You think _you'll _feel better if you ever kill the real Sawyer?' she spat back at him. He reeled as if he'd been stunned. 'That letter in your pocket, the one you carry around with you. You think _you'll_ feel better?'

He stared at her in shock. Then he narrowed his eyes, boring into her, the shift in him almost instantaneous, she could feel the anger rising up fast inside him. 'How'd you know about that?'

'You were searched when we captured you.'

She saw his hand automatically go to his pocket. She knew the letter was still there. She'd seen Ben put it back after he'd taken a copy for his files. Sawyer's expression change minutely as he verified it was there, safe. She couldn't help the feeling of indignation rising up in her as well. This went both ways. 'You let him ruin your life as well as your parents'.' she said in a mocking voice. 'You're a smart guy, James, but you turned into a man-whore just like the real Sawyer. Why'd you let that happen?'

He opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. 'You don't know nothin' about me.'

00000

He came up here to think. Somehow staring out at that crazy planet gave him perspective. He'd known they had a file on him, she'd told him before, right back at the beginning, in that sick bay. And he'd known what it meant even then, but now it was personal, now they were... well, not friends, exactly, but he didn't like her knowing all that stuff about him. He didn't look good on paper, and she knew things he'd never told anyone, things he never would tell. Not in a million years, and there she was, with her perfect memory, walking around like a goddamned encyclopedia on his life, quoting from it and using it against him. He didn't like it at all.

And what made it infinitely worse was he didn't know a thing about her. Nothing. Only that she was a doctor, that Ben had brought her to the Island and she wanted to leave, that she had nightmares and the guy she'd been involved with had gotten himself killed. And there she was with her big blue eyes staring into him like she knew him or something. Pretending like the things she read about him in that file gave her some sort of right to comment on his life.

She didn't know shit.

He didn't move as he heard someone coming quietly up the stairs behind him. It wasn't Helo and it couldn't be Sharon. No prizes then.

'Hey.' she said softly.

He didn't answer.

'Helo not here?'

He snorted. The room wasn't exactly huge, and there wasn't anywhere for the big guy to hide.

'Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have- I stepped over a line. I'm sorry. I was angry and I took it out on you.'

He didn't look round, but took in a deep, slow breath. 'Who else has seen the file?' he asked, tight lipped, his jaw clenched defensively.

'I don't know. Ben showed it to me when you were captured.'

'What else did it say?'

'That was pretty much it. I think I've thrown all of it back in your face now.'

He shook his head. 'You think you got me all figured out.'

She was silent.

'Get the hell out of here.' He growled.

He heard the rustle of her clothes as she turned and climbed back down the stairs.

* * *

00000

'You still mad?' Helo asked her.

She was silent, refusing to even look at him.

'Because you haven't talked to them for over a week and it's getting kind of awkward. I mean I get it, he attacked you, but you've got to let it go, Sharon. We have to make this work.'

'Why?'

'You're the one who said that they'd been sent to help, and now you walk away whenever one of them comes near you?'

'I don't trust them. And I thought something would have happened by now, that they'd have come for me, for _us_, and-'

'What? Who?' he said sharply. 'Who would have come for us?'

'My sisters. They would never leave me here, not if they knew. They'd have taken me somewhere safe. Taken _us _somewhere safe.'

'Your sisters?'

'The other eights.'

He felt the air leave his lungs. 'You've got to be kidding me.'

'You're not the only one who has family, Helo.'

'_Had _family. The Cylons killed them all, remember?'

She blanched, swallowing hard as she looked away. 'Yeah. I'm sorry.'

'Look, you didn't do it... Sharon, I don't blame you.'

'Of course you do. I'm a Cylon, remember?'

'But you're not like them.'

She stared down at the floor.

He took a deep, calming breath. 'These sisters of yours... I thought you said the other Cylons were out to kill us - and I _saw_ one of you, I saw her raise her gun, and I saw you shoot her.'

'She didn't know.'

'Know what?'

'That I'm pregnant.'

'And you think the other... Eights... know now?'

'Maybe.'

'And what makes you think they'd help us if they did?'

'They want this as much as I do.'

'Right.'

'They're my sisters. We're close.'

He shook his head. This was crazy. This whole thing was too crazy.

x

'You really think they're from Earth?' she asked suspiciously.

'I don't know. Yeah. I guess I do. That or some podunk colony that thinks it's Earth.'

'Maybe they're pretending.'

'Why would they do that?'

'I don't know. They might be lying. About everything.'

'I don't think they're lying. Besides, if they really wanted to hurt us they could have by now.'

'No. They couldn't. If either of them tried it I'd kill them. I think they know that.'

He stared at her, surprised. 'They haven't tried anything else, have they?'

'They know now it wouldn't work.'

'I think you're paranoid.'

'No. Just careful. And realistic. We've been running for two months, Helo, what makes you think we're any safer with them?'

'Maybe you just don't like humans.'

'You think that's what this is about? You think I'm as bigoted as you are? You think I'd be with you now if I thought like that?'

'You just wanted a baby, you told me that.'

'No. I love you. _You_. And yeah, I want us to have a baby, I want us to be a family. Why is that so hard for you to understand?'

'Maybe you being a Cylon has something to do with-'

'Why don't you get it, Helo? Why don't you see that it's different, that I'm different?'

'And all the other Eights too-'

'Yeah. Them too.'

'So now you want me to feel all warm and cuddly to every frakking Cylon who-'

'No. No, I don't. I don't expect that. Look, I get it, Helo. I get why you can't do that, but I am what I am, and I have sisters and you just have to accept that-'

'Sisters? You're all identical _machines_, so no. I don't have to accept it. I'm just about dealing with how you're not Boomer, how you've turned out to be a frakking _Cylon, _that you're here, you're carrying my child, and-'

'And you still have feelings for me.'

The simple statement took the breath out of his lungs. 'Yeah.' He said quietly. 'And I still have feelings for you. So?'

'At least you're man enough to finally admit it.'

He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again.

'And frak this.' She said angrily, getting up and pushing past him roughly, almost knocking him to the round. And then she was gone. Again.

x

Sharon was sitting on the bed staring into space. She did that a lot. Like she was shutting down or something. It was weird. It wasn't normal and it was beginning to freak him out.

He was noticing differences now. How she didn't really fidget or move, how she could do that, stay still for hours doing nothing. At first he'd assumed she was resting, but now it was like she'd zombied out completely.

'Don't you get bored?' He asked sharply. He'd been standing right in front of her for at least five minutes and he was convinced she hadn't even noticed he was there.

She looked up, startled.

'You've been sitting there three hours now. Aren't you bored? Don't you want to do something?'

'I am doing something.'

He frowned. They'd had over a week of doing nothing and it was driving him insane, but she didn't seem like she was interested in keeping busy. Not like the rest of them. Perhaps Cylons had a switch someplace and they could turn themselves off. Made sense.

She glanced at him uncomfortably. 'It's something we can do,' she said hesitantly. 'We... go places.'

He looked around. '_Go places?_ You leave here?' he asked, confused.

'Only in my mind. But it feels real. We call it _reimagining. _At the moment this is a beautiful beach,' She waved her arm around at the drab room. 'The ocean is right there, I can hear the sounds of the gulls and the surf. It's beautiful. We've got a beach house,' she continued dreamily. 'With a room for the baby. I was painting it this morning. Pinks and lilacs.' She glanced over at him and then down at the floor, flushing with embarrassment. 'I just wish you could see it.'


	67. Earthspeak

Chapter 67

Earthspeak

'Want to join me?' Helo asked.

'Not really my thing.'

'Yeah, well, you might like to make it your thing if we're gonna be here for a while. Easy to lose fitness in deep space.'

'Right.'

'C'mon. Two laps round.'

Sawyer sighed. Not only was the guy deluded but he was a fitness freak as well.

Two laps later and he was puffing like a steam train. Three days later and Juliet was joining them too, and then it became a whole lot easier.

'You like this?' he asked her once he'd caught his breath.

'Yeah. I used to run a lot when I was working at the hospital. It's good for stress.'

He shook his head, bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

'You need to stop smoking, James.'

'I ain't smoked in months.'

'Then you need to run more.'

x

A week since their fight. Neither of them had mentioned it. Sure, they'd been polite and all, but it hadn't been the same. He'd read a lot, she'd cleaned. And they'd both run around the storage deck. With Helo. Sharon never joined them, but then she was supposed to be pregnant, so...

Helo was friendly enough and even Sharon had almost smiled once - not at them, at something Helo had said - but she'd smiled _in front_ of them, which was progress. Sharon spent most of her time in her dorm room while Helo sat for hours in the control room. And still none of it made sense. Funny how living in a small space became the whole world. Or the whole universe. It was too easy to forget there was anything else excepting Juliet and Helo and sour-faced Sharon.

x

'OK, your favorite James Bond.'

He looked up from the pan on the stove. 'Easy. Sean Connery.'

'Really? Not one of the newer ones?'

'No. I like his accent.'

She frowned. 'OK. Jane Austin; Emma or Pride and Prejudice?'

'What makes you think I've read 'em?'

'You've read everything.'

'Doubt that.'

'Come on, just answer the question.'

He sighed. 'At the risk of sounding like a girl, I'd say Pride and Prejudice.'

'Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion?'

'You don't give up, do you?'

'No.'

He frowned, thinking. 'Persuasion.'

'Ah! I knew it!'

He laughed, in spite of himself. 'Knew what?'

She didn't answer, just smiled at him and blew her hair out of her eyes.

'You're crazy, you know that?' He leant forward and pushed the hair behind her ear. He'd been longing to do that forever.

She froze, then, staring at him like she'd been stung.

x

'I saw you, you know. With Kate. In the cages. Ben had a camera on it.'

He spun around, his mind doing some sort of crazy dance trying to catch up. 'You saw...'

'You and Kate. Yeah.'

'What the-?' He almost dropped the plates he'd been carrying.

'And Jack saw you as well. And Ben.' Her voice was level, factual, no hint of cruelty. But even that wasn't helping any. He frowned and thought back. Thought back to Kate and that night in the cages, of what it had meant then and what it might mean now. He glanced up to see Juliet watching him steadily, her head to one side.

'You were all watching?' His voice felt thick. 'What the hell-'

'It was on a security camera. Jack escaped and found the room with the screens.'

He put the plates down carefully on the table. 'And you?'

'I was supposed to be watching Jack. Look, I-' She went silent, then shook her head. 'Just thought you should know.'

'Yeah. Well. Thanks for the heads up.' He said sourly.

x

'So apart from Ana Lucia and Kate, who else got your gun?'

He winced at the expression. She sure knew how to jab him right where it hurt. 'That's it.' He said firmly. 'And with them it was only the once.' He didn't know why he was feeling so bad about it. Hell, it was none of her business if he'd screwed every female in the goddamn camp. Except that he wanted her to know that he wasn't like that. He wasn't the man whore she thought he was. Sure he had needs- what guy hadn't? But he wasn't the way she was making him out to be.

'You miss her?'

He tensed. 'Who?' He hoped she wasn't going to go the Ana Lucia route again.

'Kate.'

He let out a long slow breath. _Kate_. Did he miss her? He frowned. 'I haven't thought about her in a while, so I guess not. 'Sides, it don't matter. She wanted Jack.' He hesitated, then decided to say it anyway. 'I wasn't good enough for her.'

'And Jack was?'

'Do the math, Blondie.'

She looked at him sharply but didn't say anything.

x

'So why did you tell me? About Ana Lucia?'

He looked up sharply. She was sitting on her bunk, frowning, her eyes focused clearly on him. He was always so mesmerized by the blue of them that he barely heard what she said. But he caught the last two words. _Ana Lucia_.

'Did someone else see you?' she persisted. OK, so he wasn't going to get away without answering her.

He shrugged. 'I don't know. We was down by the river, so...'

He saw her face pinch. Yeah, not a visual she wanted. 'Look, if I could go back in time, I'd say _no_, but-'

'It's fine. I just wondered, that was all. If no one saw you then why tell me?'

He frowned. 'Well, looks like Ben has cameras all over, so-'

'But you didn't know that, when you told me.'

He sighed. 'Does it matter?'

He heard her hesitation. 'Guess not.'

'Ok. Look, I just figured I'd better come clean so's it couldn't come back later to bite me in the ass. That file has things on me that I ain't told no one, and hell, you know everything else about me, figured if this one was a deal breaker I'd better get it early.'

'Early?' She was frowning again, that cute way where she scrunched up her nose.

'Look, I just figured you deserved to know, OK?'

'Why?'

'I just told you why.'

She was still frowning. He knew that what he'd just said didn't add up. Didn't add up to him either.

'So, is it a deal breaker?' he coaxed.

'For what?'

'For you and me.'

She was silent for a while. All he could hear was his heart beating. _You and me_? He hadn't meant to phrase it like that, but once the words were out, then yeah, he realized that was what he wanted to say. She was silent for a long time, too long, slowly considering his words.

'Well.' She looked down at her lap and then back up at him. 'I'm still watching your back, if that's what you mean.'

x

'One thing that's been bothering me.' Helo held up a finger, the cards still in his other hand. Sawyer snapped his attention over to him, immediately on full alert. Helo being bothered was not a good thing. Sawyer held his breath and waited as Helo lengthened the pause and then slowly continued to deal the cards.

For once, Sharon had joined them. She was like some skittish animal; it had taken her two weeks to even stay in the same room as them, but finally Helo had gotten her around the table for a card game, and there she was, still shooting daggers at him, but at least making the game a four. Maybe by the end of the evening they might even get another smile out of her. He glanced over. Maybe not.

'What's up, the bathroom not clean enough? Hair down the sink?' Sawyer asked lightly, sneaking a glace over to Sharon. She hadn't moved or changed expression, but was watching him suspiciously.

'When we first came here you said you'd seen me a few hours ago.'

Sawyer scanned wildly for any hint of a trap, but the question seemed straightforward enough and too direct for him to do anything but answer it. 'Yeah, well, kinda hard to tell the time without a watch,' he hedged.

'It was nearer two months.'

'What?' _Sonofabitch_. He didn't see that one coming.

'From the time I saw on you Galactica to when we met up here. Two months. Give or take.'

Sawyer glanced over at Juliet. Her eyes were wide with alarm. Yeah. Here we go. Another crazy Helo trip. They hadn't had another _Picon _incident for a few weeks now, so he should have been expecting this. Actually, he'd thought the guy had gotten over it because he'd expected it to go to shit long before now. But this one was kind of unexpected.

'How long do you think it was?' Helo was already asking Juliet. Sawyer felt a rush of panic. He almost opened his mouth to speak for her, but then held his breath and waited.

'I never went to sleep.' she said softly, 'So no more than a couple of days. Though we kept switching to different places, so I guess we could have been put into a coma or something, but-' she shook her head. 'There were no physiological signs of that.'

'Such as?'

'Well, in a coma you'd still need adequate hydration and nutrition. I didn't have any needle marks, no sign of a drip or any sort of medical intervention.'

Sawyer looked over at her approvingly.

Then Sharon stood up. 'This is bullshit.' she said vehemently. 'You're frakking with us.'

'Hey, calm down, OK?' Helo stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. Her bionic shoulder.

Sawyer resisted the urge to get up as well, but sat firmly at the table and hoped Helo would do his calming juju thing with her. 'OK. Fine. It was two months,' he said quickly, ignoring Juliet's wide eyes.

Helo spun to face him, looming over him. 'So why'd you tell us two days?'

'Guess we must have got you confused with someone else.'

Helo's look told him everything he needed to know. And more. _Crap_.

x

'What do you think that was all about?'

'Hell if I know.'

'He knew you were lying.'

'Yeah, well, one of us is.'

'Why'd you change the story? That was so lame.'

'You rather Bionic Woman got out her bad ass arm and started throwing us around the room?'

She shook her head. 'Guess not.'

'Look, it's more of Helo's crazy. We go along with the crazy, right? First they do the _Picon planet _thing, now they're messing with time. Same old same old.'

'So we go along with it?'

'Yeah. But I should have been smarter. I walked right into that one.'

'Ben's probably bored.' she mused. 'He must have put Helo up to it. I think he's communicating through that control room. Ben must have told him to stir things up a bit.'

Sawyer grunted. 'How long we been here now?'

'Over three weeks.'

'Crap.'

00000

Helo sat in the dining area idly playing with his fork. Sawyer and the Doc were across in the kitchen cooking. They did that a lot, always cooked together, chattering away in that weird language of theirs. He'd never heard anything like it. A month now and he still hadn't managed to even separate one word from another. But they both seemed to understand each other just fine, throwing unintelligible sentences back and forth, laughing. There was an elegance to it, a smoothness in the way they interacted. And the sexual tension between them was almost palpable now. Sometimes he just wanted to get up and mash their faces together and get it over with already.

'_?'_ Sawyer's face turned to him, Juliet looking over as well as if they both expected an answer to _that_. They did that a lot. Sawyer would turn and say something to him as if he fully expected him to understand, as if he didn't realize he was talking in a foreign language and Helo had no clue what it was he was saying. And then Helo would ask him to repeat it and Sawyer would effortlessly switch languages. It was weird. No, more than weird. Because however bilingual you were, you still knew which language you were speaking, right? You could still hear the words coming out of your own mouth, and what was coming out of theirs was so different, so _alien_ that they only had to listen to themselves to hear how far away it was from English.

But there it was again, Sawyer repeating the unintelligible phrase, a little louder this time, Juliet's polite expression waiting for an answer.

'You talking to me?' he asked wearily.

'Yeah.'

'So what did you just say? I don't understand _Earth_.'

Sawyer laughed, that false_ Helo's crazy but we'll go along with it anyway _laugh he always put on when he was faced with anything that pointed to their reality being bigger than Earth. Helo sighed. He was tired of calling them out on it. Each time they both resolutely refused to admit that they were speaking anything but English and it was the one thing that made him suspicious of them and wonder if Sharon was right and this was some elaborate set up and that the two innocent looking Earthlings were really sinister players waiting to pounce. They were perfect for the part; interesting, funny and yeah, they made a cute couple. Sweet. The Doc was gentle and sensitive and Sawyer was eager to please and protective of her. In any other setting he'd like them a lot, hell, they'd probably be friends. Good friends. Which made him all the more wary and careful.

Sharon said he was too friendly with them, and she was right. He was breaking all sorts of military protocol, but there was a limit to how long he could sit in that damn control room staring out at Picon and thinking too much. He was going stir crazy worrying about the baby, about what was going to happen, how they were even going to get out of there. Sharon was so locked up in her own mind that she might as well have been on Sawyer's planet _Zorg. _So, yeah, the chance for a laugh, to play a game of triad, joke about, drink some Ambrosia, sit in the company of these two - who _were _good company, if nothing else. Even Starbuck would say '_to hell with it._'

'I said, '_How long do you think they plan on keeping us here_.' Sawyer enunciated the words slowly and clearly, like Helo was deaf and really hadn't heard the first time. 'So you gonna answer the question or what?'

'I had thought we'd be out of here by now.' Helo admitted carefully. 'But there's been nothing on the Com. Dead. No colonial signals at all.' He looked away. The implications of that fact alone were too much to contemplate. Every single colony had gone dark. He didn't even want to wrap his mind around it.

Sawyer went quiet. Another look over at the Doc confirmed that they considered _that_ the crazy answer. Not tragic, not terrible, not the genocide that it signified. Just crazy.

Helo wondered how they had really gotten here, who had brought them. He'd been here with them for a month now and he was pretty much convinced they had no idea where they really were. They were like a couple of sensitive, exotic birds plucked out of their own environment and put somewhere completely alien to them. They didn't belong here. He was surprised that Sharon couldn't see that. Though Sharon was so caught up in Sharon right now, that she couldn't see much of anything. Well, caught up in the baby and whatever it was that was so interesting inside her own head.

x

'Food sculpture? Nice.' Helo examined the strange little figures that Sawyer was carving out of yesterday's dinner.

'No. Chess set.'

'_Chess.'_

'You never played?'

'I've never seen it before. What is it, some Earth thing?'

Sawyer shook his head, the usual check in with Juliet, _Space Crazy Alert, _both moving swiftly to their version of Condition One.

'So it's a game?' he pushed.

'Yeah. Came from China. Two opposing armies. These here.' He pointed to several small squares of blue _Routrain, _'Are the foot soldiers, the _pawns._ This one is the castle, the knight, bishop-'

'Bishop?' Helo wasn't familiar with the word.

'Yeah, religious leader.' another warning glance to the Doc. 'Then the king and the queen. You gotta capture the king. Two player game. When I've marked out the board I'll show you.'

x

'You're making up these rules as you go along, aren't you?'

'No. It's called castling. It's legit. You can't castle out of check, though.'

Helo grunted. He had to admit it was a good game. He was sure it would have caught on if anyone in the colonies had known about it. And he got it. Two armies. A straight fight. No Cylons or machines or weirdness. He played six games straight before Sawyer had the good sense to grab another bottle of Ambrosia from his stash and after that he lost count.

x

'What are you so afraid of, what do you think they're really going to do?'

She turned to face him, her expression pinched and determined. 'Wait until I have the baby and then take him away.'

'Him?'

'Or her.'

'Right. Thought for a moment you had some Cylon inside knowledge about the sex of the baby, and-'

'I'm sure Cavil has plans.' She blurted out. 'Tests. Something.'

'What? You think they've been sent here to take our baby to the Cylons?'

'Yeah.'

'Why didn't you tell me this before?'

'I thought it was obvious.'

'Well it isn't.'

'Well why else send them?'

He paused. 'Look, Sharon, I don't know what's going on, but I'm pretty sure that they don't either. They still think they're on Earth, for frak's sake. Whoever brought them here did it without them knowing a thing about it.'

She shook her head.

'If you'd even spoken to them for the past month you'd have found that out-'

'I don't want to speak to them, Helo. I just want to have my baby in peace, I want us to be together without them here and I want us to be left alone. And that's it.'

He stood there in silent shock. All she wanted was to have a family. A normal life. He felt his anger crumbling. 'Yeah.' he sighed. 'Me too. But they're here and we do need to figure it out. And for that we need to talk to them and not hide away like it isn't happening.'


	68. Man Up

Chapter 68

Man Up

Sharon had been watching her all day. Tiny furtive glances, almost like she about to go up to her and say something, then she'd turn away, stare at her food, fiddle with her plate, get up, leave the room, then come back a while later and do the whole thing over again. Juliet had seen it in patients before - wanting to know, wanting to ask, waiting until they had plucked up enough courage or found the words or the right moment, or-

'Can I ask you something?' _Finally_. Sharon looked awkwardly down at the piece of lint she was picking off of her sweat pants.

'Sure.' Juliet wiped her hand on the dish towel and tried to give her most reassuring, welcoming smile, pushing away the thrill of alarm at having Sharon's complete attention for the first time in weeks. Her eyes flitted nervously to the gun around her waist, the heavy gun belt incongruous on top of the sweat pants.

'I'll be twelve weeks pregnant now, right?'

Juliet snapped her attention back to Sharon's face, took a deep breath and then nodded, steeling herself for whatever was coming next. Whatever trap this was. She waited while Sharon looked away, chewing on her lip. 'Are you really a doctor?'

Juliet gave a short, breathy laugh, trying to hide her nervousness and anxiety at where, exactly, this was headed. 'Yes, I am.'

'And you know about babies?'

'Well, my speciality is pregnancies rather than babies per se-'

'Do you think my baby's OK?' Sharon's words took her by surprise. Both she and Sawyer had come to the conclusion weeks ago that Sharon wasn't really pregnant - and of course it was conveniently too early in the pregnancy for anything to actually show. But here she was, blurting out the words with convincing sincerity, worry and fear lacing her voice. Juliet tried to cover her surprise with a cough, buying enough time to go through a mental checklist about what she could say, her training automatically kicking in as her mind ran through a list of what could be wrong. 'Have you had any bleeding, or-'

'No. No, nothing. But that's it. I can't feel anything. Aren't I supposed to feel the baby moving or something by now?'

Juliet let out a soft sigh of relief and gave her a smile that she hoped would pacify her. 'It's much too early. Most women don't feel the baby move until eighteen or twenty weeks. It's often later with a first pregnancy.'

'Oh. So you think the baby's OK?'

'I'm sure everything's just fine.' She smiled again, hoping that everything _was _justfine. Or that at least Sharon believed she was sincere and that the phantom pregnancy act didn't have a more sinister layer to it. _Play along, _she reminded herself.

Sharon gave her a weak smile and turned away.

'Was there anything else?' Juliet's voice halted her. Sharon turned slowly with a frown and Juliet immediately regretted having said anything more.

'No.' And then she was gone again. Juliet stood looking at the door, a wave of anxiety creeping over her. She had no clue what this meant. Maybe Sharon really was pregnant. Or maybe she wasn't. Without any proper medical equipment she wasn't in any position to verify it either way.

'What was that about?' Sawyer edged up beside her and stared at the doorway where Sharon had disappeared.

'Oh. Nothing.'

'She talks to you for the first time in weeks and you say it's nothing?'

'Patient confidentiality.'

'You serious?'

'Completely.'

x

'So then Frodo takes the ring, and-'

'That was Sam.' He interrupted her.

'What?'

'Sam took the ring. Frodo was going crazy so Sam took it off of him.'

'Thought you said you hadn't read it.'

'No. I said I couldn't _recall _reading it.'

'Well, clearly you _recall _it very well.'

'Yeah, but I like hearing you talk and it's a long story, so...' He smiled at her indulgently.

'So you lied.'

'No. I stretched the truth a bit-'

'You lied, James. You lied to me.'

'Yeah. But it took you two days to tell the story, so it was worth it.'

'Are you serious?'

He shrugged and gave her _that _smile, all dimples and low cut jeans.

She sighed. How could she resist that? He was so smooth, so... ugh. 'You can't just change the rules when it suits you - what about trust? Weren't you the one who said we had to trust each other!'

'Well, you trust me now, don't you?'

'I _did_. Before you started lying to me.'

'Don't you ever play tricks on folk you trust?'

'Well, yes, but-'

'It's like that. We get along, we _trust_ each other, and I played a trick on you.'

She hesitated, then a huffed sigh. 'You're going to regret this.'

'Bring it on, Blondie.'

x

This place was driving her crazy. The walls were too close, the light was too dim during the day, too bright at night and she'd give anything to see sunshine and feel wind and rain again. It was like being shut in a tiny metal box with barely enough air to survive. A month. A whole month. Somehow once that day came, the day where she finally had to acknowledge that she'd been there a month, something inside her crumpled. She didn't want to be here a moment longer. It felt like her insides were busting out of her, like she had to get out, _now_. Running around the storage deck was the nearest thing to sanity she had managed to grab a hold of, but that wasn't nearly enough. She was going crazy.

Helo and Sharon didn't seem to care. They seemed all too comfortable with being shut into a small space with lousy lighting. Maybe they got out at night. Maybe there was a trap door in their bedroom and when they locked the door to sleep they slunk off to immerse themselves in delicate sunsets and the smell of the earth and the sea. Or maybe it was really daytime during the nights here and they went out to enjoy the sun. That had to be it. She couldn't see any other explanation for their ease around being in this place. Because nothing here was enough. Even going up and gazing at that ridiculous planet didn't help her any, thought it felt good on her eyes to focus on something further away than the nearest wall.

And James? Didn't seem to bother him too much either. Though she was quite sure that he wasn't running off in the middle of the night having a secret tryst with natural light. She would have known if he had, the way she was sleeping. No, he was stuck there like she was. The only explanation she had for his continued sanity was that there was some secret coping mechanism that she didn't know about.

She gave a frustrated sigh and scrubbed harder, taking it out on the stubborn stain on the cooker. Whatever food they'd eaten last night had not only tasted like cardboard but it had set like concrete. She wouldn't have been surprised if they'd used it to build the place.

'You tryin' to kill that or what?' Sawyer asked with a hint of wry amusement.

'It. Won't. Come. Off.' She muttered angrily.

'Yeah, well, why don't you try yellin' at it? Might make you feel better.' She glared at him, but he wasn't giving anything away. His eyes were twinkling with amusement and she saw his lips twitch. She wrenched her eyes away from them and gave the cooker one last, fierce scrub before she stepped back in defeat, blowing the hair angrily out of her eyes. She was going to scream. Any moment now. She was going to stand there and start primal screaming and never, ever stop. And Sawyer had to quit standing there with his jeans on his hips and his hair and that freaking dimple.

'You OK?'

'I'm fine.'

'Wanna talk about it?'

She took a deep breath. 'You were in prison for a while, weren't you?'

There was silence. She glanced over to see that the dimple had gone, replaced by a frown. She felt the familiar prickling of the atmosphere between them.

'I guess that's in my file too, huh?' he said with an ominous calmness.

'And in the public records; it's not as if _that _one's a secret, James.' And OK, so that came out harsher than she'd intended. She knew he hated being called out on what was in that file, but he had so many damn secrets, so many things he didn't want anyone to know - so many reasons for her to stay a million miles away. And she knew them all.

'And your point?' He was glaring at her full on now.

'It's just- there's just so much cleaning and running and washing I can do, feels like my skin is crawling from the inside out. You were in prison for months and I thought you must have had some way of dealing with it... that was all.' she let the words trail away, the defeat now clear in her voice.

He was still staring at her, but his look was morphing into surprise rather than irritation. He away, over at the wall, and then took a deep breath and sighed deeply, from his guts. 'It ain't the same. They gave us things to do. A gym. More space. And that place was full of guys and I ain't into that, so it wasn't so bad.'

'_Huh_?' She stood there open mouthed, completely confused, then flushed with embarrassment when she realized what he was saying, what he was _really _saying, before she stuttered her way through the next sentence. 'I meant being shut in a small space.'

Two seconds of confusion and his eyes met hers with a level stare. 'Oh.'

'So... how are you doing this? This place, I mean-'

'I ain't.'

'Oh.'

'But I ain't gonna off myself, so-' he shrugged.

00000

'So what about you?' Sawyer said, trying to keep it as light as he could. She knew so much about him and she was mostly a complete blank to him. It didn't seem fair, but she'd been so tight lipped. She didn't trust him. No surprises there. He wouldn't trust him either.

'What about me?'

'We been here over a month and you ain't told me nothin' about _you_.' He watched her steadily as she straightened up and pushed the hair away from her eyes.

'You haven't asked.'

'That's because I was waiting for you to tell me.'

'Maybe I was waiting for you to ask.'

'Yeah, well, I was hoping you'd trust me enough so I didn't have to ask.'

'You waited a whole month?'

'I'm a patient guy.'

'Right.'

'So?'

'What?'

'I'm asking now.'

She looked away. He could see her thinking about it. Too hard. He sighed. 'Forget it.'

'No. It's not that - there's really nothing to tell.' She hesitated, he could see her already filtering what she was going to say. 'We moved around a lot. Parents divorced. Went to medical school, got married-'

'You're married?' OK, so that was a surprise. He hated the bastard already.

'Divorced. He died.'

He breathed a sigh of relief, then realized what else she'd said. 'Wait a minute. _Died_. How_?_'

She shifted uncomfortably. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

'Anyone you been with still alive?'

She gave a bitter, choking laugh and then shook her head. 'No.'

He pushed away the deep sense of unease that _that_ brought up in him and tried to move on to something else. 'You got any brothers or sisters?'

'One sister.' She hesitated. 'And a nephew.'

'You never had kids?'

'Edmund didn't want any.'

He grunted.

Another hesitation. 'He wasn't a very nice man.' Juliet was staring down, not looking at him. There were sorting through a pile of laundry. Not that they had many clothes, but it took up time so they always made a big deal of it. He bent over next to her and picked up a shirt, idly running it through his hands.

'You ever think of your daughter?' she asked suddenly. 'Clementine, wasn't it? Pretty name.'

He felt his whole body lurch forward. He gritted his teeth and tried to suppress a wave of annoyance. OK, so it was simple deflection. He got it, she didn't want to talk about herself so she brought out the heavy guns and aimed them right at him. Worse thing was, it was working. Even though he knew what she was doing. Even though her move was transparent as all hell, he could still feel himself falling for it. No one had ever gotten under his skin like she was right now. Never.

'So that's in my goddamn file too?' he bit out the words without trying to hide the venom in his voice.

'Yeah.' Her look was defiant, challenging.

'Don't you ever forget anything?' he asked, completely exasperated.

She shrugged almost apologetically. Almost. 'Not often, not if it's written down.'

'Thought you said you'd thrown it all in my face already.'

'Yeah, well, guess I was saving that one.' She paused. 'You file said you never contacted her.'

Why the hell did she keep doing this? OK, fine, he was a bum and a loser and a freaking disaster in every area of his life, but did she have to rub his face in it every chance she got? He put the shirt down and glared at her. 'No I never contacted her.'

'But you left her a lot of money.' She mused quietly, ramming the point home as if he hadn't gotten it already. 'So you obviously cared about her. Why didn't you ever see her?'

He stared at her open mouthed and then felt something snap inside him. 'What the hell is it you want from me?'

'I'm justtrying to understand-'

'Well don't, because I sure as hell don't need it.' He took a step back and ran his hands through his hair in utter frustration, taking a deep slow breath to try and calm himself down. 'So just drop it.' he hissed.

She stared back at him, meeting his eyes with blue. Oceans of blue. 'I'm sorry.' she said calmly. 'But for the record, I think you'd make a good father, and she'd be glad to know you. That's all.' She turned away, not seeing his expression of confused surprise.

x

Dinner was strained. Helo had persuaded Sharon to join them, either against her will or better judgment. And now she was there, glaring sourly as usual. She'd lightened up for a few days after she and Juliet had had their little chat, but now it was Sharon as usual and the place was tense as all hell. Sawyer eyed the bionic arm suspiciously. The other one was pretty much healed up now and the half ripped uniform had gone and been replaced with sweat pants and a sweat shirt. Navy blue. Sharon and Juliet looked the same now, dressed in their Hatch equivalent of Chairman Mao suits. He thought it would have dampened his feelings towards her - the sweat pants weren't exactly flattering, not like she was wearing tight jeans or a two piece bathing suit or a low cut dress... he severed that line of thought immediately and took another huge mouthful. Scrub that, even with the sweat pants she looked sexy as all hell. He had to stop his mind from going there. She was driving him crazy enough as it was. He'd had enough cold showers to keep a colony of Miami Zoo penguins happy. Not that he knew if Miami zoo had penguins. Or even if there was a zoo there. Juliet might know, he should ask her.

'So. How's the Com?' he mentally changed the subject and focussed on Helo instead, watching as Helo paused mid bite and took a chug of water.

'Fine. Empty.'

'Picon?'

'Still there.'

'You think they'd change the wall paper.'

'The what?'

'The view. Out the window. Be nice if they changed it.'

He saw Helo smile and shake his head. Sharon was glaring daggers at him.

'A sunset would be nice. Or a beach scene.' Juliet smiled wistfully and took another bite of her food.

'Thought you'd have had enough of beaches.' Sawyer said dryly.

'You can never get enough of beaches.'

'So you're a sea and surf kind of girl?'

He ignored Helo's snort of amusement.

'Just a beach bum underneath, I guess.'

'Hanging out with surfer dudes-'

'So are you two going to get it together or just launch yourselves into high orbit?' Helo asked.

'What?'

'Oh come on, this has been going on weeks. Why don't you both quit dancing around each other?'

'What the hell you talking about?' Sawyer glared at him, not daring to even look at Juliet.

'You two. Why don't you man up and make a move?'

Sawyer was silent, a furtive glance at Juliet confirmed that she was staring resolutely at her plate. 'Cos the lady ain't interested.' he said, with only a hint of bitterness.

'That's not what it looks like from here.' Helo commented dryly.

Juliet glanced up and then blushed and scraped her chair back. 'Excuse me.' she said quietly, before getting up and leaving the room.

'What the hell did you do that for?' Sawyer rounded on Helo, pulling back immediately when he saw Sharon stiffen and sit more upright in her chair.

'Thought I'd help you both along, hell, how long's it gonna take?'

'I told you she ain't interested.'

Helo shook his head.

'And she ain't like that.'

'Like what? She likes you, you like her, so get over it, man up and do something about it!'

'You're giving me girlfriend advice?'

'Well who else is there? Someone's gotta.'

Sawyer stared at him in exasperation.

'Look, I've been watching you two dance the big dance for nearly two months now. Time to move it along before _I _lose it.' His enigmatic smile didn't fill Sawyer with any confidence. Sawyer shook his head and carried on eating in silence. Taking too long to wash the dishes and clear away the rest of the food. Juliet's plate sat there half eaten, and both Helo and Sharon left it sitting there, giving it meaningful looks as they helped put the dry pans away. So Helo even had Sharon interested enough to watch the goddamn plate. With a huff he picked it up and headed into the dorm room.

There she was, sitting reading on the bed.

'Sorry about that.'

'Wasn't you.'

He waited a moment then leant over and put her plate on the shelf by her bed. 'Kept your dinner for you. Turned blue...'

She smiled but wouldn't meet his eyes.

'Look, I- this is kinda awkward. I know I'm not the sort of guy you'd want to-'

'What?'

He rubbed his head in exasperation. 'I know what you think and-'

'What I think?'

'Yeah. The file and all.'

'Oh.'

He took a deep slow breath. 'So it's OK.'

She still didn't say anything.

He almost ground his teeth in frustration. OK, time to lay his cards on the table. Maybe Helo was right. Man up. 'Look, Juliet, I like you, OK? You're smart and kind and I-'

'Stop.'

'What?'

'Stop.'

He caught the note of alarm in her voice and waited, watching as she took a deep ragged breath, the tears beading in her eyes. 'If you say anything, James, anything at all, then god only knows what he'll do to you.'

'What? You talking about Helo?' he asked, confused.

'No. Ben - he's already killed Goodwin, and that was all my fault, and if you-'

Sawyer froze. 'Is that why Ben got Goodwin killed? He was jealous?'

'More like obsessed.'

Sawyer grunted and then looked at her carefully, taking a small, slow step toward her. 'So if I kissed you now...?'

Her eyes flashed in alarm. 'Please,' she whispered. 'Don't do this.'

'Cos you ain't interested or because you're scared of Ben?'

She hesitated.

'Cos if Ben's your only objection, then-' He leant forward and slowly touched her face, running his thumb down the side of her cheek. He'd wanted to do that forever. Her breath hitched but she didn't move away. He leant forward a little closer, their faces almost touching now.

'I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you.' Her words were barely a breath but her eyes didn't leave his. They were pools of blue, pulling him in. He inched closer, his lips gently brushing hers before he pulled back, waiting to see if she'd run or if she wanted this too...

'He'll hurt you.' she murmured, shaking her head and pleading with him with her eyes. She wasn't running though. He closed the gap between them and brushed his lips over hers again, firmer this time; if she was going to run she'd better do it soon.

'James.' She breathed his name softly, the way she said it making his belly clench. 'We can't. Ben-'

'To hell with Ben.' he growled, then leant down to kiss her again, pulling her into him this time, his arms around her, his lips on hers. He expected her to push him away, but instead she moved closer, tucking herself into him. He groaned. 'You're killin' me, Blondie.'

He expected Ben to burst out of the walls firing shots at him, or Helo to come in with some planetary catastrophe to distract them. But nothing happened. Just him and her and the most searing, body tingling kiss he'd ever experienced. It wasn't the same with her. He had no clue why that was, but something was off. Different. Good. Nothing he was used to. And in the end when she'd finally, gently, pushed away, he'd felt so overwhelmed that he didn't know where to put himself. Even a week staring at Picon wasn't going to straighten this one out.


	69. Love Medicine

Chapter 69

Love Medicine

She was asleep. How the hell could she sleep? He was dying here. He was lying only ten feet away in his own bunk but there may as well have been an ocean between them. Or an Island. To think that she had been there, on the Island all that time. And when they first met he'd felt nothing. Nothing at all. He couldn't believe it now, couldn't believe that their first meeting hadn't sent some sort of shockwave through him. Well, it had. That goddamn taser had done that. It wasn't exactly hearts and flowers - Though he wasn't a hearts and flowers kind of guy, more like, yeah, a taser kind of guy.

She'd gotten that right from the start.

And now there she was, in the bed ten feet away. Snoring. Even her snores were cute. He'd got it bad...

He leant up on his elbow and pushed the blanket curtain aside so that he could see more of her. She was muttering now, shifting about, dreaming. She had the same kind of dreams he did. Bad ones. He waited a moment, watching her carefully. Her face was scrunched in a frown and she wasn't looking happy at all. He hesitated, then silently slid out of his own bunk and made his way quietly to hers, kneeling down next to her and carefully putting a hand on the side of her face. She stilled a moment, like she'd frozen there. Had he woken her? Then she turned her face away and sighed, rolling over so that her back was to him. Asleep again. He waited, still kneeling there. Now that she'd gone back to sleep his excuse had flown out of the window. Or the hatch door. But did he really need one? She'd kissed him. Boy, how she'd kissed him. And then gone to sleep alone.

He guessed that had been a _no _then.

With a sigh he headed back to his own bunk and lay there without sleeping, listening to her even breathing and wondering why she wasn't as flustered as he was.

It must have been a good hour or so later, but this time there was no doubt in his mind. She had screamed. Really screamed. He should have gone before, should have been there, holding her. And now she was awake and sitting bolt upright, a look of terror on her face. Before she could so much as blink he was there, slipping into the bunk beside her, holding her, pulling her to him, burying his face in her hair.

'Shhhh. It's OK. I'm here.'

She gave something like a sob and then stilled in his arms. 'I'm sorry.' she whispered. 'Bad dream...'

And that was it. He was there, in her bed. By stealth and design, and a whole lot of waiting. 'You want me to go?' he asked huskily, praying that the answer, for once, would be no.

She shook her head and curled tighter into him, laying half on him, half on the bed. It was barely big enough for one, let alone two. And he was a big guy.

'You're hot.' she muttered after a while.

'Thanks.' he smiled and kissed the top of her head. 'So are you...'

'No. I mean _too _hot - too warm. I'm too warm.'

'So take some clothes off.' He was wearing only his boxers and she was regaled in sweat pants and a T-shirt. She huffed but didn't move. The clothes were clearly staying on.

OK, she didn't want more than that kiss then. He stifled his disappointment and reigned in his already raging libido. It was nice just holding her. No way near enough, but if that was all he was going to get... God, it felt good holding her. She was so... woman. And not just any woman - though he had to admit that any woman would feel good right now. But Juliet was something else. He buried his face in her hair again and breathed in long and deep. She smelled good. He held her tighter and closed his eyes. Still frustrated as all hell, but this was so good. He thanked the stars - and Picon - that he was exhausted enough to finally get some sleep.

He woke up to her wriggling. He stilled as she quietly eased her pants off, wriggling out of them, leaving her T-shirt on. Then she snuggled back into him.

'You gonna lose the shirt too?' he murmured. He tugged sleepily on the fabric, a tiny smile ghosting over his lips.

'I thought you were asleep.' she said quietly.

'Yeah, I was. Ain't now though.' he raised his eyebrows suggestively. He pulled her in tighter and then sighed. Without the sweat pants he could feel her. All of her. Well, from the panties down. 'C'mon, lose the shirt.' he groaned, his hands round her back now, pulling her hips flush with his.

'Maybe.' She said quietly. 'But that depends.'

He stilled immediately, sensing the seriousness in her voice. 'On what?'

'On whether I'm in bed with James or Sawyer.'

He froze and his body immediately went rigid, his arms becoming bands of steel before he consciously loosened them.

'I want the grown up.' she said clearly, pulling back so she could fix him with her eyes. 'Not the kid who never got over what happened to his parents.'

He stared back at her, but he still wasn't moving.

'You still got that letter stuffed down your pants?' she asked him pointedly.

He clenched his jaw and slowly eased out from under her, pulling away. And then he was gone, back to his own bed, her words still tearing at him.

'You need to let it go, James. You're thirty five years old. You're more than that.' There was a pause, then her voice was softer. 'Even if he you found him, it wouldn't take the pain away.' Another pause. 'All it's doing is destroying you and any chance of real happiness. Don't let him win, James. Don't let him destroy you too.'

Couldn't she just shut the hell up? He pulled the curtain down over his bunk, drowning out the echo of her words. How the hell did she do that? Hit him right _there,_ right where it hurt, right where there was no damn thing he could do, nothing he could say. Like a bullet to the chest, it felt like he'd been slammed backwards. What the hell did she want? Some goddamned _conversation _about it? There was no way he was ever going to be able to do that. And what the hell was her problem? Since when was his life any of her goddamn business anyway?

Since he'd made it clear that he wanted to sleep with her. Not that he felt like it now. Her words had had the effect of instantly freezing him, a bucket of cold water dousing him with a cold, hard shock.

He lay there, awake. What the hell did she mean, anyway; _It wouldn't take the pain away_? What the hell did she know? It was all just goddamn psychobabble. _James the grownup or Sawyer the kid_ he mocked in his mind. Crap.

And the letter, _his_ letter. She'd obviously read it. And yeah, he _was _going to find him, find the real Sawyer. Avenge his parents. Get even. That had been what had kept him going, that had been his purpose. His mind ducked away from what else it meant - the way he'd unwittingly turned into some creepy con man preying on rich women like the real Sawyer; the way he'd shot and killed the wrong guy because he'd wanted his revenge so bad that he hadn't stopped to check out his facts properly first. He'd been so caught up in getting it done, so blinded by his need for revenge that he'd fallen for it, let Hibbs play him. And now had the nightmares to prove it.

_Don't let him destroy you too._ He lay back in the bunk, one arm over his face, her words circling around in his mind. _Don't let him win, James. _

He sat up and reached for his jeans, pulling the letter out of his pocket and holding it carefully in his hands, his childish handwriting staring back at him. _I know who you are and I know what you done..._

_But one of these days I'm going to find you._.

He'd spent his whole life looking for the guy - it had _been _his life. He hadn't wanted anything else. Not until that was done. He'd always figured that his life was going to start _after _his revenge.

But now? He sighed again.

But now there was Juliet.

Before she'd mentioned it, he'd forgotten about the letter. For the first time in his life, he hadn't thought about it in weeks. He fingered the paper gently, running his fingers over the words. _I know what you done..._

Giving him an ultimatum like that wasn't playing fair. She shouldn't even know about the letter, let alone read it. But then he'd never wanted anything more than he wanted her right now. And it wasn't just physical - though that was a big part of it - it was more, she'd taken over every part of him. Even this. He looked down at the crumpled piece of paper. It had been with him for so many years, the one thing he'd hung onto.

Without over thinking it, he took the paper in both hands and tore it quickly in half, then half again, then again and again until only a handful of tiny pieces lay in his hand. Then he shifted the curtain aside and stood up. She was awake, lying in her bunk staring at him. She'd have heard the sound of the paper tearing. He avoided her eyes and silently closed the space between the bunks and laid the pieces carefully on the shelf over her bed. Then he stood there, watching her carefully, hesitating before he reached down and tugged at the bottom of her T-shirt. She glanced over to the tiny scraps of paper and back to him, her face giving nothing away.

'It's history,' he muttered hoarsely, cursing his voice for giving up on him. 'Now you going to lose that T-shirt?'

x

Helo and Sharon were already clearing away their breakfast. And Helo, being Helo didn't miss a beat. 'See you two finally made happy.' he smirked knowingly.

'You army guys always like this?' he asked, irritated.

'Yup. Ain't no secrets on a Battlestar. That right Sharon?'

She shifted uncomfortably and didn't say anything.

'Though technically, I guess you haven't ever been on one, so...'

'Stow it, Helo.' she snapped.

'OK.' he put his hands up in surrender. 'Just teasing.'

'Well don't.'

Sawyer looked from one to other, following it all like a tennis match.

'Guess we're getting a little crazy now.' Helo muttered. 'We been here, what, six weeks?'

'You need to take some of the love medicine, man.' Sawyer clapped him on the back. 'Worked for me.' He watched Juliet stifle a shy smile before she began bustling around the kitchen area. 'Or I guess you could just run around the storage deck twenty times...'

x

'C'mon, I'm taking you on a date.'

She giggled. 'A date? Really?'

'Yeah.'

'Where?'

'It's a surprise.'

She smiled again, then pushed herself off her bunk - no, _their_ bunk - and took his outstretched hand. His whole heart swelled when he held her hand like this and he'd started making up excuses to take her places. Not that there was anywhere to go... He had turned into a complete girl. And he didn't care. He smiled and tugged on her hand to pull her close, brushing his lips softly against hers. He couldn't get enough of her. He didn't think he'd ever get enough of her. 'C'mon.' he mumbled, trying hard to restrain his flaming libido. 'Got something to show ya.' She laughed again as he gently pulled her out of the room. 'Close your eyes.' he said softly, putting both hands on her shoulders to guide her along. Another soft giggle that made everything inside him clench with desire. This woman was going to be the death of him. He took a deep breath and carried on walking her forward. Up the stairs in the rec room, across the pile of rubble, up again until they were both standing in the control room. 'OK, now open your eyes.'

She was standing in front of him, laughing. 'It's Picon.' she said, the amusement tipping into full out laughter.

'Yeah.'

'Is this what you wanted to show me?'

He eased himself closer and pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her neck from behind. 'Thought we could pretend it was a movie or something.'

She laughed again. 'Oh James,' she sighed, shaking her head, then sobering as they both stood staring at the scene in front of them. 'How long do you think we'll be here?' she asked quietly, all humor gone from her voice.

'I don't care, so long as I'm here with you.' He was turning into the world's biggest sap.

'Who would have thought.' She said softly, wistfully, staring out at the stark view of the round planet in front of them.

'What, you and me, or Picon there?'

'Both...Why haven't they made a move?' she asked, the fear creeping into her voice.

'Reckon Ben's playing a long con.'

'A what?'

'Play a con for a good long while. Make it bite deep, then pull it.'

He felt her shudder and held her tighter. 'I don't want to lose you.' she whispered softly.

'You and me both, Blondie.'

x

The rhythm was the same; they ran, they talked, they made love, they stared at Picon. Sometimes they talked to Helo. Rarely they spoke with Sharon. Sometimes Helo tried to talk to them, but his conversation turned crazy fast and they'd learnt to politely ease away from anything too weird. Like asking what the climate was like on Earth. Or how many orbiting moons... they'd smile and tease him gently and then change the subject.

Three months. The days had blurred into each other and he didn't give a damn. He'd never been so goddamned happy in his life. Juliet was gorgeous, funny, attentive, sexy as all hell and he could feel himself sinking deeper and deeper into being with her, encased in this tiny bubble that he never wanted to leave. She was everything and more. He'd never imagined he could feel this way about anyone, that anyone could be that way with him. Was this love? He sure as hell hoped so because it couldn't get any better than this.

Dinner. Not the blue stuff for once, the slimy goo instead. It tasted OK, but the texture was just plain nasty. Sharon was with them. She'd started doing dinner again, twitchy bionic arm always hovering over that damn gun of hers. Helo lost the gun weeks ago, but not Sharon.

'So. Triad?'

Sawyer nodded. They hadn't played in a couple of days. Looked like even Sharon was up for joining them tonight. Too bad. She still freaked him out. Three and a half months and the girl still hadn't relaxed. She still looked the same. Thin. Skinny. No sign of any pregnancy. Well, maybe a little. Maybe a little more belly there than before, but then all she did was eat and hang around in that room. She wasn't pounding out the circuit with them every morning. But then, maybe little Miss Bionic didn't need exercise to keep herself healthy. They were sitting round the table, Juliet next to him, Sharon at one end and Helo opposite them. Eating. Suddenly she jumped up, pulling the gun out in one swift movement. 'Over there!' she hissed, her eyes on a patch of the floor in front of them. He paused mid-chew and stared over at an empty space. Oh great. A crazy Shron meal. He almost groaned out loud.

'What?' Helo shifted in his chair. Sharon was already standing, pointing the gun at the empty floor.

'Force field.' she said. Sawyer squinted. The girl really was crazy. He shook his head, glancing over to note Juliet's shocked expression. He put a reassuring hand on her arm. The big worry was that the gun was out again and Miss Bionical was the one waving it around. He only hoped that Helo- he stopped mid thought and took in a sharp breath as he saw it - a shimmering, silver edge, like a mirage on a road, like the air was crackling. He stood up when a figure appeared out of _nothing_, knocking his chair backwards, his eyes fixed in horror as the empty space on the floor was filled by the image of a body lying on it, and not just any body... he dragged his eyes off _that _as another figure materialized next to it, disheveled, long hair, beard, wide eyed, staring into nothing, kneeling down and facing to the side, the two frozen in place like statues from a nativity scene.

'Penny? Penny!' the kneeling figure shouted, suddenly lurching upright and stumbling away from them towards the side wall, one arm outstretched, both eyes unseeing. 'NO!'


	70. Arrivals

Chapter 70

Arrivals

Desmond stared at the blank wall where Penny should have been. There was nothing there now, just a hard, gray wall. He stifled a sob of fear and confusion, his eyes flicking down to the body of John Locke. _He _was still there. But not Penny. And her bedroom wall hadn't been gray. She'd been standing there in front of them. Right _there_.

And now she wasn't.

He felt himself stagger a little, lurching forward because there was nothing to hold onto. She'd gone.

He shut his eyes, hoping that when he opened them again there'd a be a new scene, something other than the wall in front of him - and the people he knew were watching him would be gone. He hardly dared to look. He'd heard the click of a gun, he was sure, and now he could hear their breathing, felt their eyes.

'Desmond?'

He swung around, taking a moment to focus on the figure in front of him. _"Sawyer_?"

Sawyer? From the Island?

He quickly scanned the other faces, none of which he recognized, letting his gaze rest a moment on the one in uniform, _that _uniform. He groaned inwardly. And the girl with the gun, holding it steadily aimed at his head. _Shooting to kill_, he thought without surprise. He turned back to Sawyer who was eyeing him with confusion.

"You just... appeared." Sawyer was saying with a shake of his head, like he was trying to figure it all out there, just from watching him getting dragged into a new level of hell.

'Where are we?' Desmond asked, his voice barely above a whisper, taking in the gray of everything; walls, doors, the unpleasantly subdued lighting. No windows. Yet another prison.

'A hatch.' Sawyer was still staring at him a little too intently, like he was talking down a wild animal, or trying to calm a brawl that was about to get out of control.

'So we're on the Island?' He couldn't stop himself automatically checking to see if the gun was still out, still aimed at his head… He took a deep breath and dragged his focus back on Sawyer, the one stable, safe, known point in this latest episode.

'Yeah.'

The girl with the gun gave a snort of derision and Desmond's gaze flitted quickly from Sawyer back over to her, then across to the one in uniform. 'You're one of them.' he said softly, 'The space people.' His mouth felt dry. There was silence in the room. Then he took a deep breath and addressed him more clearly. 'Are we really on the Island?'

'No.' The guy was big, broad, he held a strangely pitying expression.

'No.' He repeated softly. 'So where...?'

'We're on a mining ship orbiting Picon.'

'_Picon_,' he breathed, running the word around his mouth, tasting it, testing it. 'Which is what?'

'A planet.'

Desmond swallowed hard and then nodded once.

'What's goin' on, Desmond?' Sawyer had taken a step forward, his expression a curious mix of surprise and alarm.

Desmond shook his head, 'If I told you, you'd think I was stark raving bonkers, brother.'

'So you two know each other?' the guy in uniform had also taken a step forward, but not enough to shield him from the girl with the gun. Desmond held his breath, not daring to meet her cold, hard stare.

'Yeah. Desmond here was in the hatch - on the Island.' Sawyer's voice was calm.

'And that one?' They all looked down at the body on the floor.

'John Locke. One of the plane crash survivors. Though what he's doing here... they said he was dead. Desmond, how the hell'd you do that? How'd you even get here?'

Desmond shook his head. 'I don't know.'

'But you're from Earth?' the one in uniform persisted.

Desmond nodded once, and then felt a wave of nausea. Maybe that would help, maybe that would change all this. He'd just throw it all up. He didn't want to be here, he wanted to be back with Penny. _That's right_, a snarky voice in his head said, _you'd be Desmond Hume number two, the guy from the future, trying not to bump into Desmond number one..._ As if that could ever have worked. 'Is Daniel Faraday here?' He asked, suddenly realizing who was missing.

'Ain't never heard of him.'

He frowned. Daniel was the only one who knew anything about all this. Apart from his bloody mother. There was silence for a moment, then Desmond cleared his throat and looked down at the prone figure on the ground beside him. 'I suppose he'll wake up soon.' he murmured.

'What's wrong with him?'

Desmond shrugged. 'Daniel said it happens the first time. The brain reboots.' Even as he said the words he wished he hadn't. They weren't his words, his meaning. But he didn't have any other explanation. His whole brain, his being, felt vague, unfocused, as if his mind were really away somewhere else. And trotting out Daniel's little nonsensical phrases wasn't helping that feeling at all. 'He should wake up at some point.' he added.

The girl with the gun hadn't moved. She was still standing by the same table pointing her gun right at him. Somehow that should have bothered him more than it did. There was another awkward silence and then the gut in the uniform turned to her. 'You recognize him?' He nodded over at Desmond.

'No.'

'So not a Cylon then?'

She shook her head again, but her hands were steady on the gun.

'This here's Helo, Juliet - and Sharon.' Sawyer pointed out each of the others, eyeing the girl with the gun warily as he waited for Desmond to silently take in their faces and names.

'So this is how you got here?' The one in uniform was turning to Sawyer now.

'Yeah. Crazy huh?' Sawyer's gaze darted nervously over to the gun.

'No ship?' Helo asked.

'Nope.'

00000

Sharon was tight lipped, her bionic arm twitching ominously over her gun, Helo's jaw was clenching a staccato beat as he kept a steadying arm on her and silently let Sawyer show Desmond the 'hatch'. Which Desmond had apparently decided was a freaking spaceship after all. OK, so Desmond had to be in on it too, but _that_ didn't explain how the hell he had materialized right in front of them. And yeah, he _was _real and not some projected image. Sawyer had _accidentally _knocked into him to make sure. The guy looked wrecked though. Really wrecked - like he'd been dragged through hell and back several times, and he didn't look like he was enjoying his little tour, his eyes widening with horror every time he was presented with anything vaguely spaceship related. That at least gave Sawyer some satisfaction. And when they got to the best bit - the view of good 'ol Picon sitting there in the sky, his breathing picked up like he was going to hyperventilate and he looked like he was going to throw up all over the instrument panel.

'You know him?' Juliet whispered fiercely from the back of the room, the distraction of Picon giving her enough cover for a hurried conversation.

'Yeah, he was in the hatch when we found it.'

'So he wasn't in the crash.'

'No.'

'You don't know him that well, then?'

He looked at her quizzically. 'Guess not.'

She nodded, obviously rating the guy into some category in her head. Alien spy maybe?

They dragged John Locke into one of the bunks in their dorm room and dumped him in a bunk furthest from where he and Juliet slept. Sawyer pushing down the twinge of irritation that it was _their _room that had to house him. He was heavy and stinking of sweat. He'd always been an ugly son of a bitch, but Sawyer had never really had to handle him up close. He'd gotten used to clean bodies and the scent of Juliet, and having Locke in there was giving his nose an unpleasant workout. Sawyer fervently hoping he'd wake up before they needed the room so he could fix up a bed someplace else. Maybe he could sleep in the goddamn showers or something. The guy was absolutely rank.

A couple of hours later and Desmond was lying on a bunk near Locke staring at nothing, Locke was still out of it, guarded by Helo and Twitchy Bionic while he and Juliet were attempting to escape into some normality by heating some of the slimy bean stuff for a second dinner, figuring that Desmond at least had to be hungry.

Sawyer still had no idea what to make of their arrival, what it meant, what the hell was going on.

He and Juliet hadn't said much. Juliet had been anxious and alert, silently shadowing him, looking around nervously in case someone else appeared out of thin air. They both nearly jumped out of their skins when Helo leant into the doorway and tapped on the wall. 'The new guy's just waking up. You wanna come on in before Sharon shoots him?' The line was delivered in a way that made it clear he wasn't joking. Sawyer took a deep breath, a squeeze to Juliet's arm to let her know it was all OK and then he was following Helo into the room. A quick scan confirmed that Sharon wasn't there, but Helo's gun was back in its holster, and Helo had positioned himself by the door, leaning on it nonchalantly with his hand resting easily on the gun-belt. Yeah.

There was a groan from one of the bunks, movement, and then John Locke's bulk came slowly into view as he sat up, arms on his knees, rubbing his head groggily before he looked up, frowning in recognition at the sight of Sawyer, his expression curious. He looked over at Helo and then back to Sawyer, raising his eyes in surprise. 'I'm not dead then?' he asked.

'No.'

A grunt. 'You got anything to eat?'

One thing he could say for John Locke; that guy sure could eat. He was shoveling down a large helping of the bean goo with an enthusiasm that Sawyer found almost distasteful.

'Last thing I remember we were in the hatch.' Locke was saying between mouthfuls. 'I smashed the computer and it was counting down, stuff flying everywhere,' he waved a fork full of food in the air to demonstrate before popping it into his mouth, chewing quickly before he continued. 'The whole place was falling down. Then Desmond said he had a key.' He frowned. 'There was a flash, I think. And then _boom_! Woke up here. Where are we, anyway? This another hatch?' He looked curiously around, his eyes landing on the heavy metal doors.

Sawyer and Helo exchanged glances. 'You going first or am I?' Helo said with a hint of amusement.

'Maybe we should just toss for it,' muttered Sawyer. Juliet was silent next to him and Desmond was still on that damn bunk refusing to move. Sawyer took a deep breath. 'Well, _we _think we're in another hatch, but Helo here thinks that - hell, you tell him, he's gonna find out sometime, huh?'

'Find out what?' Locke's interested, amused expression somehow gave Sawyer some comfort. Locke was a crazy bastard, but at least he was smart. And Sawyer knew damn well what side he was on - his own. He got it that John Locke's first priority was John Locke. And _that _he could work with.

'We're on a spaceship.' Helo said bluntly. 'Orbiting a planet called Picon, which is one of the twelve Colonies. Planets.' He clarified.

Locke paused, putting his fork down slowly before he turned slowly to Sawyer. 'And I take it you don't believe him?'

Sawyer shook his head. 'Nope.'

Locke paused, taking another thoughtful bite. 'How long have you been here?'

'Nearly three and a half months.'

Another pause. 'Well, that's strange, unless I've been unconscious for all that time.'

'Is that even possible?' Sawyer turned to Juliet. She was looking pale, her eyes darting quickly to his and then back to Locke, automatically tracking down his arms where Sawyer could see that there were no signs of any puncture marks from needles or drips or any other medical equipment. Locke followed their gaze, looking at his own arms and frowning.

'You'd have some sign of needles or something,' Sawyer explained. 'If you'd been in a coma.'

'Mmm.' Locke grunted, 'So you don't think I got knocked out and here I am, waking up nearly four months later?'

'It's called time travel, brother.' Desmond was standing by the door now, leaning against it with abject weariness. 'We're all lost.' There was a depth of hopelessness oozing out of him.

'Lost?' Locke echoed.

'Wait a minute, you say you're traveling through time?' Helo asked, frowning. Sawyer cast a glance over to Twitchy Bionical over there. She was glaring again. Not good.

'That's what Daniel's mother said.' Desmond answered cryptically.

'Daniel's mother?' Sawyer asked incredulously. OK, so Helo didn't hold the patent for crazy after all.

'She said it was an accident.' Desmond's eyes still had that haunted, hollow look to them. 'We're just collateral damage.'

'Wait a minute, collateral damage? What are you talking about?' Helo asked.

Desmond sat down wearily on a seat. 'I don't know, brother.'

Helo was watching Desmond closely. 'You just appeared out of thin air. I mean, how's that even possible?'

'We what?' Locke interrupted.

'One moment the floor was clear, the next you was there, laying on it.' Sawyer supplied helpfully.

Locke frowned.

'And me and Juliet here, looks like we got here the same way.'

'Three and half months ago?'

'That's right.'

'And you don't know how - or why?'

'Not a clue.'

'So... you arrived here three and a half months ago, appearing out of thin air, and _you_,' he gestured over to Helo, 'Are from space?' He raised his eyes quizzically, an amused smile pulling at his lips.

'If you want to believe him,' Sawyer said dryly. 'We kind of assumed he was crazy.'

'_We_ meaning you and Juliet?' Locke clarified. 'And Sharon?' he asked, looking pointedly at her.

'She's with the crazy team.' Sawyer said nervously. 'No offence,' he added, wincing as Juliet kicked him hard under the table.

Locke swung around in his chair. 'I guess you haven't tried to open any of the doors to the outside?'

'Airlock,' Helo said bluntly. 'You wouldn't last a minute.'

'So you never even tried?' The question was aimed pointedly at him, and Sawyer felt his face heating.

'No.' He admitted, 'But there's hatches on the Island underwater. With airlocks. Juliet almost got drowned in one. Seemed dumb to risk it.'

Another satisfied grunt from Locke. Sawyer leaned back in his chair. He didn't trust John Locke, hell, he didn't even like the guy, but he had to admit it was a relief to have someone trying to figure it out, someone who wasn't as caught up in it. Helo and Sharon seemed to feel the same way, because they were watching Locke expectantly, almost like they were waiting for him to pull some answers from thin air.

Yeah, Sawyer thought, didn't matter from where or who, but some answers would be good.


	71. For Real

Chapter 71

For Real

'... So you just _fell_ onto this helicopter jet and then woke up on a ship?'

'That's right.' Sawyer tapped his fingers impatiently on the table. This was getting old. Since he'd finished eating enough for three people, Locke had decided that _now _was the best time to unravel the craziness. Only problem was that there really weren't any answers, and it was late and he was tired and the only thing stopping him from calling it a day was the realization that there wasn't any escape, that he'd still be sharing a dorm room with Mr Stinky over there and Juliet still seemed interested enough to sit there so, hell, why move?

'And then whenever you heard the word _jump - _after a countdown - you ended up someplace else.'

He heard Juliet's soft sigh from next to him. Yeah, it did sound kinda crazy.

'You think you were hypnotized or something?'

Sawyer sat up straighter in his chair. Nearly four months and he hadn't thought of that.

'The mind's a powerful thing,' Locke was saying with one of his creepy smiles. 'But of course that still doesn't explain what you saw when you were on the ship - you say all those injured crew were real?'

'I treated them myself.' Juliet said quietly, 'They were dying. For real.' He didn't have to look over to Juliet to know what her face looked like. That was one thing he knew she still had nightmares about.

'And the nukes,' Locke was saying thoughtfully, 'and then the girl in the bath tub, the metal robots - it all sounds very _Alice in Wonderland_, almost dreamlike. Or drug induced...' That smile again. As if none of them had thought of the drug thing. Shit, it was the _first_ thing he'd thought of. _So don't look so smug, Locke, you ain't that good._

'And no one has said _'jump_' while you're here?' Locke said the word 'jump' sharply, louder, as if expecting a reaction.

'Maybe it's a combination of words- there was a countdown,' Juliet said, 'like; '_Jump in five, four, three, two, one. JUMP_.' They all waited a moment.

'Well?'

'Still here.' Sawyer said dryly.

'That's because there's no FTL on this ship.' Helo interjected sharply. Helo and Sharon had been quiet for so long Sawyer had almost forgotten they were there.

'FTL?' Locke was on it immediately.

'Faster Than Light. Hyperlight. We call it the _Jump _Drive.'

'And it does what?'

'It jumps through space. Faster than light.'

'So... whenever someone said 'jump'... ?'

'They were activating the FTL. Sounds like that's what James and Juliet fell onto when they were checking out that Raptor.'

'Raptor?'

'The plane on the Island. It has a limited FTL - and even if there's no power there would be a residual charge if it wasn't powered down properly. Racetrack would have spooled it up to try and jump out of there just before they crashed.'

Sawyer was impressed. Helo was trotting all this out with a confidence and assurance that he found almost... comforting. But after being quizzed by Locke for the past hour anyone else's voice would probably feel like a relief.

'So we really are on a space ship, like Desmond said?'

Why was Locke even asking the damn question? Sawyer felt like letting his head drop firmly onto the table with a _thunk_. Of course Locke would ask the questions that took them all into crazy.

'It's more like a space station. Built for mining ships to offload.' Helo didn't miss a beat.

'And it has no hyper-light drive?'

'No.'

Locke was nodding as if this stuff made some sense. Desmond still hadn't said a word, but he looked like he was following what they were saying. The guy still looked a mess, had barely touched the plate of food in front of him and was now staring forlornly at it, as if nothing should sit there on his plate being that shade of blue. Sawyer really felt for the guy. He couldn't agree more.

'When you fell into the Raptor - Boomer's plane,' Helo clarified quickly before Locke could open his mouth, 'Where you near an instrument panel?'

Sawyer turned his attention wearily back to the conversation. 'I don't know. There was some ramp and we fell forward.' Juliet put out a small, uncertain hand under the table and Sawyer took it, squeezing it gently.

'So you fell onto the ECO station.' Helo said as if some revelation had just hit him. He shared a meaningful glance with Sharon.

'And the FTL.' Sharon was saying with what appeared to be dawning understanding.

'And every time anyone made an FTL jump you ended up someplace else.' Helo was saying thoughtfully.

'Ah, that's what 'jump' means?' Locke was having a ball here. Enough crazy for him to feel right at home. 'OK. So... Helo, you met James and Juliet on the space ship, that's right?'

Helo nodded.

'And you took Juliet to sick bay?' Another brief, confirming nod from Helo. He was meeting Locke's eyes square on, his face a picture of determination. 'So you were there when the crew were injured?' Locke continued.

'No.'

'No?' Locke looked surprised.

'I was in that Raptor with Boomer - escorting the fighter squadron to Caprica. Then the Cylons attacked and we were shot down.'

'Cylons?'

'Machines. Robots, I guess you'd call them. We built them. Years ago.' He glanced over at Sharon. She was looking fixedly at the table. 'Then they attacked. Looks like they pretty much wiped us out.'

'With nukes?' Locke said. All credit to the guy, he was asking the questions with a completely straight face, no hint of derision at all. 'So the metal robot that James and Juliet both saw...?'

'Was a Cylon Centurion. But turns out they make human models now.' His voice drifted to silence. 'And we can't tell them apart.' His eyes flicked over to Sharon, then back to Locke. No mention of Sharon being a Cylon machine, Sawyer noticed. Perhaps he was saving that level of crazy until later.

'So you were shot down with Boomer?'

'Yeah.'

'And you landed on the Island-'

'No. We landed on the planet Caprica.'

'Ah.' Locke gave a breathy sigh and leaned back in his chair, his expression was, what? Satisfied? Sawyer shook his head, and took a deep breath. Crazy ruled. 'So how did you get here?'

'Boomer fixed the plane and took off with a load of refugees. I stayed on Caprica to fight. And that's where I met Sharon. Took us a couple months, but we made it to Caprica City, stole a plane and found this place.' Sawyer was silent, mesmerized. He'd never heard any of this before. Juliet had the same wide eyed, terrified stare that had been plastered on her face since Desmond and Locke had showed up.

'So _you _didn't turn up out of thin air?'

'No. Our ship's in the upper landing bay.' Helo nodded up at the ceiling.

'But you said you were on Caprica for nearly two months, and James here has described what, a day's worth of jumping around...?'

'Yeah. I know. It don't add up.'

'Unless Desmond is right and we're traveling through time...' Locke ignored Helo's uncomfortable expression. 'So we're really on a space station?' He asked in wonder.

'Come and see.' Helo stood up stiffly.

_Oh great, now Locke was going to get the Picon tour._ Sawyer sighed. Time to clear the plates.

x

'This our new clubhouse?' Sawyer asked sarcastically, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings of Helo and Sharon's bunk room. He hadn't been in here in weeks - no, scrub that, he hadn't been in here _at all_. He'd only looked through the door, banged on the frame to tell Sharon or Helo their dinner was ready. Of course Juliet had been in here before - that time she broke into the lockers. Seemed like an age ago now.

'We need to talk.' Helo stepped across and shut the door behind him, making Juliet jump in alarm. 'You have any idea what's really going on?'

'No.'

'You trust them?' Helo nodded to a place beyond the door, where Locke was in the shower and Desmond the kitchen, still sitting, staring at that goddamned wall.

_Did he trust them?_ Sawyer thought carefully for a moment. 'No.'

Helo looked over to Juliet expectantly. 'I've never seen them before.' She said quietly.

Helo nodded once, as if that confirmed something.

'You didn't tell them about Sharon and the... Cylon thing.' Sawyer said.

'Thought it might get complicated.'

'Yeah, well, I ain't sayin' nothin'' Sawyer glanced nervously over at Sharon. She'd lost the fierce stare and was looking - scared? He did a double take. This was a new Sharon. Angry Sharon he could deal with, but scared Sharon set his alarm bells ringing. Sharon wasn't scared of _anything_. 'So what happens now?' he tore his gaze away from her back to Helo, 'We just let them live here?'

'Well, short of throwing them out of the airlock...'

Sawyer grunted.

'Are there more?' Sharon asked the question softly, quietly, in a very un-Sharon-like way.

'On the Island, yeah. 'Bout forty from the crash and however many Ben has in his little camp.' He didn't look at Juliet. He wasn't going to use her as an informant or a spy. Sawyer still didn't know what the hell was going on, but he and Juliet were in this together. Whatever it turned out to be. Which, so far, was beyond crazy. No, they'd hit new levels of crazy now. There had to be another word, only he couldn't think of one. Crazy just didn't cut it anymore.

Helo took a deep, slow breath. 'Sharon thinks the Cylons might send out a patrol sometime soon - it's been four months, so she figures one would be about due. And last time, when you showed up, so did the Cylons. So I suggest we run patrols, just the four of us, take it in four hour shifts, make sure no one else shows up. And maybe we should keep in our pairs the rest of the time as well.'

'We get a gun in our pair?' Sawyer asked, looking pointedly at Helo's sidearm. Both Helo and Sharon were armed now, and he and Juliet had nothing but their bare hands.

He watched the thought run around Helo's mind. 'You know how to use one?'

'Sure.'

Sharon was shooting daggers already.

'Yeah. OK.'

Sawyer blanched in surprise. Wow. That was unexpected. And disturbing. The guy had to be genuinely freaked.

'Four hours on, four hours off. But stick to you pair at all times. Got that?'

Sawyer nodded distractedly.

The gun felt good in his hands. Big, powerful, not the sort of hand gun he was used to. It had a wide barrel, which had to do some damage. He stuffed it down the back of his pants and couldn't help a slight swagger as they went to take the first turn around the storage deck. It felt good to have a gun again. Juliet was eyeing him with singular amusement. 'Boys and their toys,' she sighed reproachfully, shaking her head. But she was smiling. Finally they could defend themselves. And that felt good.

'So,' she said quietly when they were finally alone, walking around their usual jogging circuit. 'What do you know about Locke?'

'I know that Hurley said he was dead.'

'Hurley?'

'From the Island. The big guy. Remember I told you about him?'

'The one who liked Libby?'

He felt his mouth go dry. 'Yeah.'

'The Island's not the place to fall in love, is it?' she said softly.

'It ain't gonna happen.' He said firmly. 'Not to us.'

'We may not have a choice about that, James.'

They walked in silence for a while, following the edges of the storage deck around their running circuit. He held Juliet's hand, could feel her thrumming with tension. 'Why do you think they're doing this?' she asked.

He shrugged. 'Shaking it up a bit. Hell, I don't know.'

'Helo gave you the gun.'

'Yeah.'

'I'm scared.'

'Yeah.'

'I don't even know what's real anymore.' He heard her voice crack.

'Look.' He stopped and let go of her hand, holding her face between both of his and staring resolutely into her eyes. 'Don't think about it. They're just trying to confuse us, and that ain't gonna happen, OK?'

'They appeared out of thin air,' she said bleakly.

'Yeah, well, just because we don't have an explanation right now, don't mean there isn't one.'

'You think this is Ben making his move?'

He felt something clench inside him. Anger? Fear? He kept his hands each side of her face, refusing to let her go. 'I have no idea... Hell, we'll take it one day at a time. We stick together, right?'

She nodded uncertainly.

'Keep it together, OK? We'll ride it out. We ain't gonna let them get to us.'

She took a deep, slow breath, closing her eyes and leaning into his hands.

'Ain't gonna happen,' he muttered more quietly, pulling her close like he wasn't ever going to let her go. 'We'll get through this. It'll be fine.' He just hoped she believed him and got some comfort from that, hell, one of them needed to.


	72. Awake

Chapter 72

Awake

This wasn't going to work. For starters, Locke still stank, even after he'd spent next to an hour in the washroom. It was like some animal had marked the place with its scent; the acrid smell of him filled the airless room, reminding Sawyer with every breath that Locke was there. It wasn't his place and he had no damn right stinking it out like that. And then there was the snoring - the bastard made such a goddawful noise that no way was _anyone _going to sleep through that. And even if all of that weren't the case, Locke was such an ugly bastard that even having him in the room at all was offensive. And then there was Desmond, lying on his bunk like some freaking psycho, eyes wide open, staring at the bunk above him. How in the hell was he ever supposed to sleep with _that_, knowing that Juliet was only feet away from whatever psycho move he was about to pull?

And all _that _was even before he'd factored in the main issue - that Juliet was over _there_ in her bunk, and he wasn't.

And it wasn't because she was coy about letting Locke and Desmond know that they were together - he got that she didn't want to give them a show - but why in hell couldn't the two new crazies just take a couple of blankets and sleep on the floor in the rec room? Oh yeah, because Helo wanted him and Juliet to spend the four hours that they weren't patrolling keeping an eye on them, staying up half the night making sure they didn't do what? Sleep walk? Throw themselves out of the airlock? And why didn't Helo have them in _his _room, for crying out loud?

Sawyer felt like yelling in frustration. He couldn't even pull the blanket over the bed and shut out the light. Couldn't even bury his face in Juliet's hair, blot out Locke's smell that way. Ah, to hell with it. He got up and shambled over to her bunk, wordlessly squeezing in next to her, ignoring the way she stiffened and sucked in a breath. 'C'mon Blondie,' he murmured, 'It's safer for both of us like this.'

She snorted disbelievingly and he wrapped his arm around her. 'They're asleep,' he lied, ignoring that fact that Desmond clearly wasn't. 'Hey, why don't I get the blanket and drape it over the bed? That way no one can see...'

'Then we can't watch them.'

'No. And they can't watch us, neither.'

She sighed a long, weary sigh. 'Guess it couldn't last forever, huh? Our little bubble.'

'Feels good right now,' he nuzzled her neck, reveling in the feel of her, her smell, her everything. He could never get enough of her.

'You think more will arrive?'

It was his turn to sigh. He pulled back a little. Did he honestly think that Desmond and Locke were the only ones? No. But it wasn't Locke and Desmond he was worried about. That spot belonged to whatever it was that had Sharon so scared, and why suddenly Helo had giving them his gun. Whoever's side they were on, Helo and maybe even Sharon were kind of friends - or something. Maybe he was wrong, but Helo's desire to protect him and Juliet seemed real enough. And even though all the stories Helo was giving Locke were still a pile of bull, underneath _that _was something else. Sawyer had known Helo long enough to sense that right now he was really scared, deep down scared. And that in itself had gotten him worried. Even though Helo was still doing his job, keeping up with all the space-age bullshit and playing Locke like a pro, there was something underneath now that had made him more than anxious. Helo knew something, and whatever that was, it wasn't good.

'Hey.' she tapped him gently on the forehead. 'Switch it off. You get some sleep. I'll watch for a while.'

'Gun's under the pillow,' he murmured, feeling his exhausted body already relaxing beside her. He'd gotten to the point where he couldn't sleep if she wasn't there. And when she was, aaaah, his body just knew it was in the right place...

He was woken suddenly, sharply, his mind coming into focus to hear Helo's panicked voice, feel Juliet shifting beside him. '_What the_-'

'When did it start?' he heard Juliet saying, her voice practical and controlled - her doctor voice.

'Just a few minutes ago; she was fine, and then it was _everywhere_.' Helo's voice rose in panic. 'You think she's losing the baby?'

Juliet was already up and out of the bed, quickly pulling on her pants and shoes before hurrying after Helo, leaving him to get up slowly, not knowing whether to follow them or stay there... Aw hell. He scooted out of the bunk, pulled on his jeans and shoes and grabbed his button down shirt, dragging it roughly over his shoulders as he trotted out of the dorm. He could still hear them, clattering their way up the staircase to the Storage deck. He followed quickly, soon pulling himself over the lip of the spiral stairs and scanning around. They were over by the pile of rocks, Sharon on the ground, Juliet bent over her.

'I can't tell just now,' Juliet was saying as he approached them. She was crouched down, her hand on Sharon's forehead. 'It could be - look, it could be a few things - we need to get her to a hospital, and fast.' Helo was running his hands through his hair, agony etched all over his face. Sawyer could see the problem now; Sharon was lying propped up against the stones, her sweat pants were on the ground next to her, leaving her legs bare. Shit, he probably shouldn't be looking, the girl was down to her panties. He lowered his eyes and turned away, but he'd still seen enough. There was blood. A whole lot of blood. All over her thighs, her legs, on the ground beneath her. She looked like a mass of blood from the waist down. Hell, it looked bad. He took a quick step back, not wanting to think what it might mean, suddenly not caring about the bionic arm or Angry Sharon, just wanting it to be OK, for the baby to be OK.

'Use the code, Helo!' Sharon was grinding out. _The code? What code?_ Sawyer felt himself starting to panic. He wanted to grab Helo and yell in his face, _'What freaking code!'_ But he couldn't, because Helo looked like he was dying a thousand deaths inside and Sharon looked like she was losing the baby.

Instead he just watched as Helo hesitated. 'They'll help, Helo, they have to.' Sharon was almost sobbing now, her face contorted in pain, her mouth twisted in anguished despair. Helo gave Juliet one last baleful look and then turned and ran up to the control room, his feet echoing loudly on the spiral stairs. Sawyer glanced over to where Juliet was busy trying to comfort Sharon. She wasn't doing anything else; maybe there was nothing she could do. He felt a wave of helplessness wash over him. 'Can I do anything?' he asked. Surprisingly, Sharon answered.

'You'll need to clear the airlock so they can get in.' She gestured weakly over to the far end of the storage deck, where the stones and rocks were piled up against the hatch door, preventing it from opening easily.

'Get in? Who the hell is coming in?' His panicked look was silenced by a steely stare from Juliet, telling him to shut the hell up. He gave an exasperated sigh. He didn't like the way this was going at all.

'She needs a hospital.' Juliet said, as if that was all the justification anyone needed. _Goddammit_. He felt another rush of anxiety as he made his way to the hatch door, immediately starting to pull away the rocks and debris. Did this mean they were getting out of there? But what about him and Juliet, what about keeping her safe? What about having some goddamned control about what happened to them? Within a couple minutes Helo had joined him, moving with quick determination, ripping the rocks away from in front of the door.

'What code?' Sawyer asked without any preamble.

Helo straightened slowly. 'It's a Cylon emergency code. I just sent it blasting half way across the frakking galaxy.' Wow, he sounded pissed. But it told Sawyer all he needed to know. Helo was still staying under cover. Covering his ass, no doubt. 'That should do it.' They both stepped back, staring at their handiwork a moment before Helo quickly hurried back to where Sharon was still half bleeding to death. Sawyer followed more slowly, not really wanting to stand there and watch the train wreck that had been Sharon's pregnancy. He wanted to talk to Juliet, find out what was really going on, but Juliet still had that Doctor vibe, a professional doctor coldness that put her a thousand miles away from him. She had a look on her face too, a determined, _this is my patient and I'm not gonna let them die_ look. She didn't seem happy, which meant it wasn't going well. He swallowed hard and then stood there alone, glancing uneasily over at the hatch door. 'Get Desmond and Locke.' Helo said grimly. 'We'll all be going and it'll save time.'

It looked like the con really was over, shattered by Sharon losing her baby. Not the ending he'd have wanted. Maybe now he didn't want an ending at all - so what, he thought they'd just stay there forever? Thought it would all end in a way that wasn't sudden and brutal? Wasn't it always going to happen fast, rip them out of there so quick that he had to think fast, react fast? Wasn't that the way it was always going to go? He steeled himself. Show time. At least he still had the gun. And this time, he wouldn't hesitate at all. The minute he saw that bug-eyed bastard, he'd shoot Ben on sight.

Desmond and Locke were both awake when he reached the dorm room, both looking at him expectantly when he rushed in. 'C'mon! We gotta go.' The words sounded unreal, even to him. After nearly four months they were leaving, just like that. For Desmond and Locke, it didn't seem thatbig of a deal, hell, they'd just gotten here, but for him... this had been his home, _their _home. He allowed himself one last, nostalgic look around before he turned to go.

'Where are we going?' Locke, of course, couldn't just do as he was damn told without questioning every single step of the way.

'A hospital.'

'Why?'

Sawyer took a steadying breath. 'Sharon's sick. C'mon, we gotta hurry.'

Desmond obediently followed him up to the storage deck, Locke close on his heels, thankfully silent for the few seconds it took to reach the storage deck.

'Can someone explain what's going on?' Locke asked when they finally made it up to where Helo was still holding Sharon, quietly putting her jogging pants back on, the dark navy of the pants covering up the blood. Helo didn't answer, but Sawyer thought it was pretty damn obvious what was going on.

'James said we were leaving.'

Helo kept his attention on Sharon, carefully pulling the pants up over her waist. 'I've sent out a distress signal. To the Cylons.'

'I thought you said that the Cylons were the enemy?'

'They are.'

There was silence for a moment while they all took that in. Well, credit to Helo for maintaining his cover in the face of disaster. And when Ben came bursting through that door, no one could say he hadn't given it all he had. Though why he hadn't just sneaked Sharon out in the middle of the night was anyone's guess. Sawyer's thoughts stuttered right there, feeling that familiar sense of disorientation - why hadn't Helo sneaked her out? Unless he couldn't. Maybe Helo and Sharon hadn't been going out having gourmet dinners, movies and walks on the beach every night after all. Maybe they really _had _been trapped in here 24/7 as well. That certainly put things in a different perspective...

His thoughts were shattered by the sound of creaking metal. He'd heard that sound before, right at the beginning when those others with the chrome robot had showed up and Helo and the rest of them had hidden behind the rock pile. Sawyer tensed, waiting while the clanging, scraping sound got louder, uncomfortably louder, and the whole place shuddered. He held his breath as the noise came to an abrupt halt. Another thunk. A pause.

'They're clearing the airlock.' Helo muttered. 'Not long now.'

Then the hatch door opened and _she_ was standing there - Barbie herself, the Blonde Bombshell, the one they'd seen before. She walked carefully towards them, standing about ten feet off, her eyes ranging across the party in front of her, stopping to rest on Sharon, still held Helo's arms. Her eyes widened when she saw the blood on the stones where Sharon had been lying and then Juliet stepped forward. Sawyer resisted the urge to reach out and pull her back. 'She needs a hospital. Proper medical equipment. And fast.'

The woman seemed to pull in a sharp breath, then nodded once, stepping forward and putting her arms out. 'I'll carry her.'

'No.' Helo was already moving forward, tenderly holding Sharon in his arms. He strode purposefully towards the hatch doors, leaving Sawyer and the others standing there, not knowing what the hell to do. Then Juliet started to follow them. Dammit. He grabbed one of her arms to stop her, thinking maybe they could still stay there, not leave at all. Just for a second. But then he saw how crazy that was, that this was their ticket out and hell, what was he thinking? He squeezed her arm gently and then let it go, taking a deep breath as he headed after her through the hatch.

They moved through a narrow corridor and the second door in front of them. The celebrated airlock. Only there was a small plane the other side of the last door, high tech, with seats at the back and a space in the front for the pilot and co-pilot.

'You're alone?' Helo said to her, gently laying Sharon down on a seat while the woman hovered over them.

'Yes.'

Helo nodded but didn't say anything.

'We need to hurry.' Juliet's voice betrayed her anxiety.

'You're a human doctor.' the woman observed.

'Oh for god's sake, can't you drop it now?' Sawyer asked in exasperation, his nerves wound tight. They were leaving, going to a hospital and everyone was still keeping up the act?

The woman was examining him curiously, giving him a long, slow stare.

'Please.' Sharon's voice, 'The baby... '

'Let's go.' said Helo, moving around Locke and Desmond, shutting the hatch door and looking over at the woman expectantly.

Barbie had already moved to the cockpit, strapping herself in and flipping a bunch of switches with a practiced air. There was a humming noise, then a shudder and what felt like movement. They were accelerating. Through the front of the plane he could see blackness, stars, the usual view of Picon from the edge of the window before it swung away again. If Sharon needed a hospital, why the hell were they messing around with a simulator?

'Where are you taking us?' Helo ground out.

'To a medical facility.'

'Cylon?'

'Of course.'

The woman didn't turn around. 'Jumping now.' she said quietly, flicking more switches and then that pull in his belly. _Oh crap._

'_A simple unexploded flower blooming in the midst of creation. Taking spores from all that settles on the oceans._

_Flowers and petals - making sure of that._

_Adjusting energy torque. Air pressure in cabin three equalized.'_

There they were again. The jump place. The woman was still there in her tub, blabbering out the usual gibberish. He quickly took in the scene around him; Juliet was with Sharon, holding her hand, Helo kneeling the other side of her. She was slumped on the floor, her eyes glazed over with pain. Locke and Desmond were standing there together a little to the side. A gasp and then the blonde was standing there too, like she'd just popped out of thin air. Her mouth was open in surprise.

Then Juliet spoke up. 'You need to take us back to the Island. I can treat her there, I have the equipment. We need to go NOW.'

_What?_ What the hell was Juliet doing talking to the crazy bath girl?

'_Fading to gray, feeling the burn, baby. Putting it out there. _

_Move along. Move along. JUMP!'_

The scene change was immediate, the heat hitting him like a wall, then all the colors and the sounds overwhelmed his senses and he closed his eyes on a gasp, blinking them open again to be met with sunshine, bright sunshine, the sound of birds, bright green, colors so vibrant that it took his breath away. And the air was warm and clean, with scents and smells that left all his senses awash, he felt himself reeling, trying to deal with this new sensory overload.

But what the hell? The Island? He swung around, twisting on the spot to get his bearings, searching around for Juliet and the others. Nothing. _Nothing_? The panic began to rise up in him, blotting out any other sensation. Where were they? He flailed around, staring into the forest around him. Or jungle. He was in the jungle. It had to be the Island. No way. And no Juliet. Or Helo, or Sharon, or any of them. The panic was raging inside him now, the realization that he might have lost her, that they had probably taken her away.

'_NO!'_


	73. Back and Forth

Chapter 73

Back and Forth

She heard the gunshot as she was leaving the hatch. The sound was a faint boom, muffled by the thick foliage. Then silence. A heavy, heavy silence. Her euphoria from earlier had completely evaporated. Gone was any good feeling she'd had from knowing that Sharon's baby was fine, from seeing it on the screen, its tiny heart beating. They'd arrived hours ago, turned up here at the site of the crashed plane and quickly made it to the medical station. Juliet's relief at finding the place, getting Sharon onto the bed, the equipment still working and the baby there, heartbeat fine, strong and steady. The relief had left them all in tears. The bleeding, she told them, was probably a twin. It looked like Sharon had been carrying twins, and yes it was fairly common if one of the twins died, and yes, there would be a lot of blood. But the remaining baby was fine and healthy, a little girl. They'd watched the screen, mesmerized, as the child kicked and sucked her thumb. And after a couple of hours she'd hesitantly suggested that she go find James and the others and bring them there.

She began walking more quickly, her mind already racing around reasons for the gunshot. James had had Helo's gun, hadn't he? There'd only been one shot. That was good - or was it? One shot. Enough to kill someone. She felt the fear spike, stabbing into a heavy lump in her throat. Perhaps Ben had shot him; what if he'd turned the gun on James? What if Ben had been watching and knew that she'd left the hatch, knew that she was out searching and fixed it so that she'd come across his body and-she stifled a sob, her hand flying to her face. It was happening again, just the same. Only now it would be James and not Goodwin lying there dead, covered in flies. The fear and dread had truly taken hold now and she was almost running, though why she was moving towards it when she should have been running away, running so far and so fast that it would never catch up with her. But she couldn't do that. And Ben knew her well enough to know that. He knew she'd go. Of course he did.

Maybe James was hurt. But one shot. It only took one shot to the head or the heart and he'd be down, and that would be it.

She spent the next half hour scrambling through the undergrowth, marveling that Helo had managed to carry Sharon all this way. Had it been this overgrown when they'd made their way there? Had she lost the trail? She wasn't familiar with this part of the Island - she'd remembered the rough map Ben had given her months ago, the crashed plane marked on it, the Medical station, the survivors' camp. The shot had come from the direction of the plane, but she must have gone wrong somewhere, because she should have been there by now. She stared up at the sky, hoping the sun would give her some inkling as to where she might be, but now she was deep in the jungle and she didn't even know what time of day it was and couldn't figure out what direction the sea was in. She decided to head up to high ground, get her bearings and then start again.

If James had been shot and injured, then she was taking so long that her stupid sense of direction might have just killed him.

A booming sound halted her in her tracks. A big _Boom!_ Like an explosion - like the noise she'd heard when the sub had been blown to bits. She tensed and listened hard. Another boom and then more shots, gunshots this time, coming from somewhere behind her. She kept on walking, heading towards the sound. A few more staccato shots and then more silence. The birds had stopped singing. She was so scared now that her whole body was trembling. She was lost, and couldn't even find her way back to the medical station to help Sharon if she needed her. It was only supposed to take her a half hour or so, she'd told them she'd get back to the plane and see if James and the others were there. She'd already been gone way longer than that. Now she was getting tired, she wasn't used to this - all this walking, climbing, the heat. She staggered up a small rise and then she saw it, the outline of the crashed plane, the high bluff above it. She must have circled around behind it somehow, because down that way was the beach camp.

The crash site was deserted, only footprints and a red stain in the dirt the sign that anyone had been there. She stared at the blood, trying to figure out who it belonged to. She bent down, examining it carefully, putting out a tentative finger and almost touching it, as if she could know if it was his just by the visceral feel of it.

But whether it was his or not, she was too late.

They weren't here. All she had was a blood stain on the ground. If that wasn't a message from Ben... Maybe she was next for the bullet. She wasn't dumb enough to think it was over, that the little pool of blood staining the earth was the end of it. She could see the trail of blood leading down towards the beach. Oh yes, there was a trail. In her mind she could see them carrying James' body, making sure the blood was dripping down, leaving a horrible little path for her to follow. Because BEn knew she would would follow. She always did.

So what now? Go to the survivors' camp? Now that Sharon's baby was OK, maybe Ben didn't need her anymore.

A movement in the bushes behind her startled her into action. She ducked behind the plane, moving around to cover so that she had good view of whoever was coming this way. She was the wrong side of the trail now, whoever was there was between her and the trail of blood leading down to the beach. She crouched down and squinted though the greenery, hoping that she was hidden enough to see but not be seen.

Her gasp of surprise must have echoed around, and the woman in front of her had clearly heard something, looking around suspiciously before taking a tentative step forward, dropping the pack she was carrying to peer carefully around before she stepped inside the crashed plane. Juliet could do nothing but stare in surprise and alarm, watching as the woman methodically examined the wreckage, not sure that her eyes or her mind were working properly anymore. But in the end, she'd know those pants anywhere, because they were the ones she'd been wearing up until she'd taken them off to help the injured crew on that ship, and that woman looked just like her - it was her, an earlier version of her; that was _her _pack, and that was _her _hair and _her _face, and...

'Well, look what we got here.'

She stiffened and almost cried out, because there was James standing in front of her - _me _- whoever, or whatever that woman was. Only this James was different too - his hair was different. Sure the clothes were the same, but the way he was standing, the way he was looking, his mocking tone. He hadn't been like that for a while, not since the beginning.

'Caught you. What, you ain't got that Taser thing? I don't reckon you have, or you would have shocked me with it by now.'

Juliet watched, mesmerized, as the scene played out in front of her.

'What do you want?'

'Hey, you got it all backwards, sweetheart. You're on my half of the Island now, and that means I ask the questions. So. What are you doin' here?'

'The same as you, I'd guess. Taking a look at the plane.'

Juliet's head felt as if it was about to explode. She was crouched down watching - what? Herself? A scene from nearly four months ago. That couldn't be right. This couldn't be right.

'You here spying for Ben?''

'Yes, James, I'm here to spy for Ben.'

The conversation carried on while she frantically tried to figure out what was happening. That was James, but... it wasn't. This was a different James, an earlier James. And that woman was her. She remembered the conversation, the way it went. She swallowed hard, still barely believing what she was seeing, completely unable to do anything but watch the scene unfold, like watching a train wreck or a car crash in slow motion.

'OK, Blondie, you spy away. Don't let me stop you – though I think you'll find they've taken everything out of here already.'

'And that's why you're here?'

'Well, I guess you never know what they may have left behind. What does Ben want to know, anyway?'

'He wants to know who they are and where they're from.'

'Well, why didn't he just ask them?'

'He did. They didn't tell him.'

'Oh, right, that's because he likes to beat the crap out of people rather than talk nice.'

'Are we done here?'

Juliet felt herself panic. She knew how this ended. This was where they came and drugged them, someone was about to attack them and they'd end up spending four month locked up in that hatch with Helo and Sharon.

'No, we ain't done, Sugar Puff– Not so fast there, Jitterbug.'

'Hey!' Juliet called out, shouted out, a sudden urge to stop this, to talk to these people, to find out what the hell was happening. When they heard her voice both of them turned. Early James and Early Juliet suddenly had their eyes trained on hers - Early Juliet with surprise and then shocked recognition, Early James with... well he didn't have time for much because Early Juliet used the distraction to bring her knee swiftly to his groin. Juliet took a step forward in time to see Early James bending over in pain as they both fell forward and... disappeared in a flash of light that made her head ache and her eyes blink blindly.

When her vision cleared they'd gone.

The weird thing was that suddenly she could clearly remember seeing herself there by the plane, a lone figure standing a little way off to the side, dressed in dark sweat pants and T-shirt, her face full of fear. And she knew for certain that she hadn't remembered that before. It was like the memory had suddenly popped up, suddenly become part of her past, part of what had happened. And it hadn't made the slightest difference to anything. Suddenly for all the time they'd been in that hatch, she now knew what she'd seen, and James had seen it too, so why hadn't either of them said a word about it, they'd never talked about it, never mentioned it. And she would have, she would have kept going on and on and asking if it had been an illusion or a dream and weird it was that they both remembered her standing there watching him getting a knee to the groin.

She was going crazy. This was crazy.

And while she didn't want to believe it, couldn't think how she could possibly believe it, the honest researcher in her had to face the facts and grudgingly drag herself to the horrible conclusion that she'd just seen herself and James from three and a half months ago. Suddenly Desmond's comment about them traveling through time and space echoed in her mind. She hadn't believed it then, hadn't really heard it, she'd let his comment skim over her, but now she was having a really hard time trying to push away the thought that this really was a bizarre trip to the past, and if that was even _possible _then hell, why not throw the whole lot in the ring and let Helo be from a planet called Caprica and say that they really had eaten rat for dinner.

She stood stock still, completely unable to move, letting her mind race through the possibilities, the memories, trying to rip it all apart and then piece it back together under new headings. Like changing a library from the Dewy decimal to some other system, the whole of her thinking had to be rearranged. That woman in the bath - had that really been a space ship? Crazy crazy crazy. But seeing herself and James just now, was _true_... wasn't it? Or was it some hologram, some image projected out here in the jungle? Or Actors. But it had been him, that had been her. They'd both seen her and now she _remembered _it. Clearly.

She stood staring at the plane, staring at the place the two of them had disappeared. Yes, _disappeared_. No one had to come to take them, or drug them or attack them. Just a flash of light. And then she remembered Helo and Sharon talking about hyper lights and residual charges and suddenly it became frighteningly clear. Helo had known. His gentle, almost pitying looks when they changed the subject and refused to have anything to do with his little space ship idiosyncrasies, and then talking to Locke and calmly discussing FTL drives and Cylon base ships and... she thought her whole head was about to explode. She couldn't do this. _Really _couldn't do this. But she couldn't go back to believing none of it was true either.

She had to find James.

She had to get back to Helo and Sharon.

She had to stop herself from going crazy.

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and willing herself to just breathe, not think about anything else but calmly get it together. If she was here in the past could that blood stain belong to James? If he was here in the past too, and someone shot him, could he still be hurt? Could he still die?

This was crazy. She couldn't believe she was even thinking like this. But she had to think, had to figure it out. Maybe she should go straight back to the medical hatch, talk to Helo and Sharon and then plan their next move. Because James wasn't here... she looked again at the small darkening stain. Maybe she should go to the survivors' camp and see if he was there. But this was nearly four months in their past, how the hell could she even speak to anyone, wouldn't she change the future or mess it all up? But how in hell did they get here? And how could they leave. Somewhere, somehow she and James were on some ship - spaceship? - somewhere.

Her head was really beginning to hurt. She opened her eyes slowly and tried to will her body into some movement. Helo. She had to talk to Helo. But then there were Desmond and Locke, where the hell were they? Perhaps one of them had been shot. She frowned. No. Hadn't James said... Charlie. Charlie had been shot just before he'd found her at the plane. She felt the relief immediately. This could be Charlie's blood. From the past. Not James'. And all these footprints would have been from the group who'd met at the plane. James had told her about it. Charlie had thrown himself in front of the gun and it had gone off and they'd carried him down to the camp, bleeding. Her eyes roamed the scene, trying to piece together a picture from what James had told her. The trail of blood had to be Charlie's then.

Maybe Ben had nothing to do with this after all. The fluttering of hope was completely irrational, she knew that. For her to prefer that she was traveling in time and space - and was probably completely screwed because of that - was irrational. Her fear of Ben was probably way out of proportion. But even so, the hope was still there, and she felt herself almost sag with relief.. It was then that her eye caught sight of it, lying where she'd dropped it beside the plane. Her pack. She took two quick steps forward and bent down to retrieve it. She'd dropped it when James had accosted her at the plane. And now here it was.

'Don't move.'

She froze, turning slowly and then fighting the fear when she recognized the figure standing behind her. Ben had shown her the mug shot and pronounced him the most dangerous man on the Island; Sayid Jarrah. She couldn't run, she knew damn well she couldn't fight him, could only stand and wait for him to circle and examine her, his eyes cold and hard, the sweat making his hair stick to his forehead, making him look even wilder. He eyed her carefully, then the pack, scooping down to pick it up and rifling through its contents, his eyes flicking up to her to judge her reaction as he took out the items one by one and threw them down; small pack of cookies, water bottle, a half loaf of bread, three mangoes and... _crap_, the transmitter. He threw down the pack and held the thing carefully in both hands.

'Don't...' she was going to say _don't switch it on._ But by the time the first word was out, the little red light was already shining and a little beep told her it was too late.

'What is this?' He looked up at her, waving the transmitter in her face. She swallowed hard. She could deny any knowledge of it, but she knew that he'd see the lie.

'It's a transmitter.'

'And it does what?'

'It transmits a signal. Like a switch.'

He grunted. 'What switch? Where?'

'I need to talk to Jack.'

He was watching her menacingly. 'I don't think so. Why don't you start by telling me who you are and what you're doing here with this?'

She felt the sick feel of the fear, cold and hard, taking residence inside her. She'd read the file, Ben had taken great delight in showing her just how dangerous this man was. Unlike James' file she found herself believing every word of it.

'I'm...' she thought fast, trying to remember where she'd been nearly four months ago. The sub. The plane. Jack... yes Jack. 'Take me to Jack and I can explain.' she watched his eyes narrow.

'You're one of them - an _Other_.'

She shook her head. 'I escaped.' She could see immediately that he didn't buy it. 'Take me to Jack,' she said with more confidence than she was feeling. 'He was there.'

There was movement behind her and a wild hope that maybe James was here, that he'd be the one striding through the undergrowth, saving her from the crazy guy. Instead there were two of them, one male, one female, both in military uniform. The guy wore the same outfit as Helo, the girl in some generic green fatigues, loose pants and a shirt. The guy was holding a rifle. He immediately looked from Sayid to her, noting her terrified expression. 'There a problem here?'


	74. Conversion

Chapter 74

Conversion

Another of those ships, more moving around. More space or time or whatever. Desmond wasn't sure that he cared anymore. It wasn't as if he had any control over it anyway. If Eloise Hawking was right, then this was probably going to be his life. And death. He'd barely taken in the strange alien place with the woman in the bath, barely bothered even seeing what it was. It was all too much, his mind was going to explode if he even let any of it register.

And now he was somewhere else entirely.

He wouldn't have even made the effort to look around - and if it hadn't been for the voice shouting in alarm he'd have probably just kept his eyes shut. But the panic had startled him with its intensity and in spite of his indifference his eyes snapped open.

'_What the frak?!_'

Desmond hadn't time to focus on anything before he felt his body being jerked upright as something knocked into him. He rolled, the wind knocked out of him, and lay for a moment, staring up at a ceiling. It looked familiar - the enclosed wall, the straps hanging down. He was in the Raptor, he realized. Back in the Raptor. Then he heard a click and turned his head to see the barrel of a gun and behind it a pair of eyes, hard and scared. He hadn't seen the man before; clean shaven, hard looking face, buzz cut. The guy looked like a typical skinhead. Though he was in military clothes - ah, a military haircut. Not a skinhead then.

'Don't frakking move. Frak! Skulls!' Desmond vaguely sensed some sort of movement from the cockpit behind his head.

'Crashdown? What the hell?'

'It's OK, I've got him covered.' Crashdown? Skulls? More pen names. Desmond was so bored of this, so utterly, utterly fed up. Even the drama didn't move him now. Even the gun's little round hole pointing directly at his eyes. He tried to keep his attention on the face behind the gun, a slight frisson of fear finally piercing the soggy haze in his mind. Something about this man made Desmond nervous. He was too jumpy. Desmond swallowed hard and tried not to move. He'd been pushed to the floor and was lying awkwardly, one elbow rammed uncomfortably under his ribs. There was no sign of the others, no sign of Locke or Sawyer, or the woman who had been bleeding to death. It was just him. Again. He wanted to turn his head, but he didn't dare move. He got the feeling that this Crashdown would shoot him if he so much as wriggled. So he lay perfectly still.

Even if it was hopeless he had to put some effort into staying alive. He had to try. For Penny.

Time narrowed down to that one point- the end of the gun that Crashdown kept aimed squarely at him. For several minutes he and the gun just looked at each other. He could hear the faint noises from the cockpit behind him, hear the messages being relayed through the radio; they were in the plane, they were nearing Galactica, they were clear to land. _Raptor 409, you have the ball._ The tinny voice echoed loudly, nearly as loud as Crashdown's nervous breathing. Desmond never moved his head, but as the Raptor lurched to a stop, shuddering as it landed, suddenly the gun wavered and Crashdown was scrambling backwards. 'Don't frakking move! Shit! There's more! Shit, Skulls, there's more, they're coming out of thin air!' A grunt that he recognized as John Locke and then another movement and a streak of red clothing as the fair haired woman flung herself onto Crashdown so fast that Desmond couldn't blink for the blur of movement. He was still lying awkwardly on his elbow as the gun disappeared, the woman's bright red clothes replaced it as she deftly and efficiently took the gun away and pinned Crashdown to the side of the plane.

Movement from the cockpit, the click of another gun and Skull's voice. 'Let him go.' It was shaking with fear. The gun too, probably, but Desmond wasn't going to turn his head to find out. And then the door to the Raptor opened and he was lying in a bright light, blinking into a huge hanger area, exposed as the whole side of the plane flipped open. He squinted into the light. There were black clad soldiers everywhere, rifles aimed at them like a prickly hedge. He didn't move, but heard a surprised gasp from Locke behind him. And the woman in the red dress had straightened, releasing Crashdown and standing slowly.

No one spoke. Not a word. The scene became a breathless tableu, a moment of peace before he knew chaos would descend again. He was so sick of the chaos.

Suddenly Desmond was being yanked upright and pushed roughly out of the plane. In front of him was Commander Adama and a lot of people he hadn't seen the last time he was here. He recognized Laura, though. She was standing looking... sane. Was she better? He recognized another as the drunken colonel from when he'd first found himself here. And the Commander, of course. Adama. He looked angry. But then he always had.

'Where's my son?' Adama said gruffly.

'Your son?' Locke took a step forward, raising his arms with a smile when the guns bristled all around him.

Adama paused for a moment, studying the man in the front of him. Locke's T-shirt was still filthy, his face rugged and sun-browned, nothing like the paleness of these people on this ship. Or him, for that matter. Three years inside that hatch hadn't left him exactly tanned.

'I'm from Earth.' Locke stated amicably. 'I'm assuming this is Galactica?' he was looking around curiously, ignoring the guns still ranged around him, the black clad soldiers' expressions purposeful and determined. The silence was almost overpowering. The blonde haired woman was standing next to him in her red dress, looking around with shocked surprise, her eyes frowning at Locke before she let them nervously flit across the rest of the faces in front of her. He sensed her tense up, a sort of strangled breath and she murmured one word, so quietly that he could barely hear it. '_Gaius?'_

00000

'_She just shot him?'_

'_No, she'd pulled the gun on Hurley and Charlie kinda grabbed it. He's the one that pulled the trigger.'_

_She shuddered, appalled at all the stories James had been telling her. She thought her side of the Island had been brutal and harsh, but his litany of death and misery was far worse._

'_He'll be dead by now,' James said quietly, pulling her tighter on the bunk. 'Pity. He was a good guy.'_

'_Maybe he survived,' Juliet said hopefully. 'Jack's a good surgeon.'_

'_He was bleeding through the bottom of the stretcher all the way to the camp. I don't think he could have survived.'_

Juliet stared down at the blood stains on the trail. James had been right; there had been a lot of blood. There _was_ a lot of blood. Present tense - though she didn't understand how it was remotely possible to have had a conversation about something that had happened months before and then suddenly find herself living it. Because she was here staring at the fresh blood. She was here, now, and Charlie had to be somewhere at the beach camp and Jack was still trying to save him.

At least she _thought _that was what was happening.

That had to be it, right? Because the blood wasn't that old and the trail was still fresh and she really couldn't believe she was here, living through the tag end of a scene that she and James had spoken about nearly a month ago. How the hell was that even possible?

She felt the panic rise into her throat again, bringing with it an overwhelming urge to stand there with her fists in her hair and scream.

None of this made sense. And without James there with her she was even more at sea. She stumbled, snagging her foot on a branch. A hand immediately came out to grab her arm, steadying her. 'You OK?' This guy - what was his name? Starbuck had called him _Lee_ - accepted her nod of affirmation and let go, keeping a wary eye on her, on Sayid, on Starbuck, on the jungle around them. She was glad that he was on the ball because Starbuck looked every bit as dangerous as James had described, Sayid, she already knew about, and Lee seemed to be the only buffer between them all.

He reminded her a little of Helo - though that might only be because he wore the same uniform. She'd made a snap decision not to say anything about Helo and Sharon. Ultimately, she had no idea who these people were - _when_ or where they were from, and her mind was straining to remember the hints and darkly veiled conversations of Sharon being in danger from the people on Galactica.

She could do with sitting down with James and Helo and trying to figure this whole thing out. Over dinner. But time was suddenly scudding out from under her, and whereas she'd gotten used to taking things slow, real slow, now everything was moving so fast that she couldn't keep track of it all. If only she could stop time, slow everything down and have about three weeks to figure it all out. Even one conversation with Helo would be good - without the wisecracks and the dumb comments about him being crazy. Now she saw that Helo had been anything but crazy; in fact, she suspected that he'd had a better handle on this than anyone, patiently sitting around letting her and James make utter fools of themselves. Because they most likely had been on a space ship and that planet had been Picon and the robot with the gun might have killed them for real.

She felt her mind doing a slow, languorous back flip, upending everything she thought was real. Kind of the like the one time she'd been persuaded to do drugs at medical school. She swore she'd never go near them again, seeing that life sized bat in the corner had really freaked her out. Maybe James had been right about the drugs. But they'd gone through all that. Over and over. No. It wasn't drugs.

Now that she'd actually listen to him, she wanted grab hold of James so that they could both hear what Helo had to say. But Helo could have been million miles away for all she could get to him right now, and James was gone.

She felt the panic twisting in her guts, scanning the foliage around them for any sign of him. She didn't get why they'd suddenly been separated. Up to now, they'd done all this crazy jumping around together, and she'd assumed that because she was here, now, that meant that he would be too. But maybe it didn't work like that, maybe getting here with Helo and Sharon had changed things. Maybe he was off someplace else with Desmond and Locke. Or maybe she'd lost him for good.

She tried not to panic, refusing to let her thoughts go in that direction and instead making herself concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring the hostile stares from Sayid and keeping her focus on the direction they were headed so that she could at least find her way back to the medical station later when she needed to. Maybe James was at the beach camp already. But what if it was a James that had never met her? The thought made her almost sick with dread. She'd already seen a James who didn't give a damn about her, what if there were more?

For all she knew there could be a version of him that existed here at the beach that didn't know or care about her and oh god her head felt as if it was about to explode because she couldn't figure it all out. How the hell was she supposed to know how time travel worked?

It can't have taken more than about a half hour to get to the beach camp, but by the end of it she felt like she had run a marathon and was dripping with sweat. She wasn't used to the heat anymore. As they came in sight of the sea Juliet felt a burst of raw fear. She had no idea what to do or say. Sayid was walking too close to her, still holding the transmitter like some trophy and now that they were at the camp she could see Lee pulling away slightly, as if this wasn't his jurisdiction and his job was done. Juliet took a deep breath and kept walking, anxiously scanning the camp in front of her for any sign of James - _her_ James. But none of the scattering of curious and hostile expressions were his.

'Hey!' she felt something grab her arm and found herself face to face with a furious looking Kate. 'What's she doing here?' The hand was tight on her arm, but the question was aimed across her at Sayid.

'She was at the crash site. With this.' he held up the transmitter as if were evidence from a crime scene. 'It's a transmitter. She said it was rigged to some sort of switch. Only she won't tell us what she was doing with it.'

Juliet drew in another nervous breath .'Where's Jack?' she said quietly, cutting of the impending cross examination, roughly pulling her arm away from Kate's grip and ignoring the way the other woman repositioned herself in front of her. She stared at her impassively. She'd forgotten how good looking she was. No wonder James had been drooling over her. And she was young. At least ten years younger than her. 'I'm here to see Jack,' she said as firmly as she could, refusing to look away.

'Well Jack's busy.'

She ignored the woman's scathing look and turned to scan the beach camp. It wasn't hard to locate him. There he was, directly behind Kate in a small shelter up away from the shoreline; she immediately recognized the curve of his back, feeling a flood of memories from months ago; his kindness by the sub, the way he had looked out for her. He'd seemed like a good guy. She took two steps away from the hornets' nest that was Kate and Sayid, expecting any moment for one of them to stop her. She resolutely kept walking toward Jack's back. He still hadn't turned around, and when she got closer she could see why. He was bent over a body on a stretcher. She wasn't a surgeon, but even she could see that Charlie wasn't in good shape. He was lying flat on the ground, a makeshift bandage around his torso, his breathing shallow and labored.

'Hey.'

Jack spun around, surprise and then recognition sweeping across his face. 'Juliet?' He stood up and threw his arms around her, pulling her into bear hug. The gesture surprised her. She could still feel Kate's eyes boring steadily into her back. She felt herself stiffening. 'You made it.' He muttered somewhere into her hair. She pulled back immediately.

'Ben sent me. It's a long story.' she took a deep breath and let her gaze flit down to where Charlie lay, his breathing much too shallow. 'He going to be OK?'

'He's still bleeding internally. I need a proper OR and...'

'There is one,' she said quickly. 'About twenty minutes from here. I can show you.'

Jack hesitated for a moment. 'It's a risk moving him, but he doesn't stand a chance if I can't stop the bleeding.' She waited, watching him figure it out. 'Guess we've no choice.'

She stood back as Jack organized the stretcher crew, all the time desperately looking around for any sign of James. She almost asked Kate if she'd seen him, but decided that her policy of silence was still probably safest for everyone. So instead she hugged herself and tried to make sure that she could find the way to the medical station from there.

Sayid, Jin, Apollo and Jack hauled on the stretcher with Kate, Sun and Starbuck were trailing behind. At some point Hurley and Racetrack started following along as well. Like some huge cast from a play, they all struggled through the jungle. All the people that James had told her about as a way to pass the time, here, come to life. No one said anything, the only sound their breathing, branches snapping, foliage being pushed aside. Once up the trail they had to cut across the jungle and Kate immediately stepped forward to help clear the way. Soon the stretcher was at the back of the line, all spare bodies fighting to clear a trail for it to follow.

Juliet just hoped she was going the right way. The jungle all looked the same near the medical station and it was easy to get lost. She could see it now; Charlie dying because she had led them all around in an endless circle. She strode ahead, the anxiety gnawing at her as she desperately searched for the hatch door.

She was just about to cry from frustration when she finally found it, there hidden by the vine. There it was.

'It's just here.' She tried not to let the relief show as she gestured to the foliage hiding the hatch door. Kate immediately leapt over to help her pull it aside and they both yanked the door open together, moving quickly down the tunnel, the cool, damp air a relief from the sultry heat of the jungle. It was darker inside, the strip lights on the walls flickering as if the power was about to cut out any moment. She could hear them bustling the stretcher through the hatch door, their footsteps scuffing on the concrete floor. They followed her into the nearest room and she quickly pulled away the filing cabinets that hid the operating room. It was well equipped, state of the art. Ethan had apparently had access to resources from Ben that he'd kept rather quiet about. It had annoyed the hell out of her when she'd first seen it, but she was grateful now.

They lay the stretcher on the table and the crowd stood around staring at him. He looked a lot worse than he had half an hour ago. Paler, breathing more shallow. Not good.

'Alright, everybody out, except Juliet.' She watched nervously as the crowd shuffled out of the room, noticing the resentful stare from Kate as she too had to leave. Jack ignored her completely and immediately set to work, finding the theatre scrubs and getting everything ready. She stood awkwardly, knowing she'd be needed to assist in the operation, acutely away that Helo and Sharon were in the room at the end of the corridor. She couldn't help but glance nervously over at the door. She hadn't had a chance to warn them without revealing their location. If Helo stayed in the room then no one would find them - it was hidden behind another set of lockers.

One thing at a time. Charlie first.

It took about three seconds before the noises outside the door told her that they'd found Helo and Sharon.


	75. Tunnel of Love

Chapter 75

Tunnel of Love

**Author's note: Hi everyone, just to let you all know that the posting regime is going to change while I figure out how to get the ending right, so it might be a few weeks before the next update, but it'll be the home stretch from there on in. **

* * *

Jeez, the girl was at it again. There she was, like the starring chick in some cop show, gun in both hands aiming it down the corridor. At least she was pointing it away from all of them.

'She's a frakking Cylon!'

Oh. _That again._ It was what Starbuck had said before she'd started shooting the last time. Hurley watched with mounting horror.. He should probably move or something, but he didn't dare go near that gun. _No one_ dared go near that gun.

That girl was nuts. He knew _he _was crazy, but at least he didn't hurt anyone. She shouldn't be allowed out, let alone carrying a gun.

Suddenly there was an answering shout and then some guy shot out into the corridor, barrelling into Starbuck so hard he slammed her against the wall behind them, his hand clenched around the gun. Hurley took an involuntary step back. He hadn't seen this guy before, but he wore the same flying suit as Apollo and Boomer. He was big though, and fast and as he crashed into Starbuck and grabbed a hold of the gun Hurley ducked down, hands over his head, expecting the thing to go off again.

Two seconds of silence and then Starbuck's strangled voice came from somewhere beneath the mound of muscle.

'What the frak! Helo?'

'I won't let you hurt her. She's with me, OK?'

Another pause. The gun was still there, held awkwardly in the air and rammed against the wall, with both Starbuck and the other guy holding on tight. It was pointed up at the ceiling but _everyone _knew how bullets could ricochet around and Hurley guessed that right now no one in this tunnel was safe. _No one._

Another second of stunned silence and then Starbuck was hissing at the new guy. 'You saw her - she's a Cylon - a frakking _Cylon_, Helo.'

'She's pregnant.' And then he sort of pushed her harder into the wall.

OK, so now the surreal factor was clambering somewhere up mount Everest and even though he didn't expect everything in life to made sense, when someone was holding a gun and it looked like they wanted to use it then it was kind of important to at least have a handle on who they were trying to shoot. Didn't look like any of the others had a clue either though, because they were all standing too. Even Apollo didn't seem to want to intervene, which was odd, because Hurley had pegged the guy as more, well, _interveney_. But Apollo was staring down the corridor where Starbuck had been pointing the gun and he wasn't doing anything. Starbuck was staring out from under one arm of the big guy now too, her eyes wary and wild, and when Hurley looked he could see why.

She was standing half naked in the doorway - dressed in nothing but a tank and underwear, her legs bare. Her belly was big enough to make the tank ride up toward her belly button. That's what he saw first. That she was pregnant. And then he let his eyes move up to her face and... OK. Weird. It was Boomer. A pregnant Boomer, though her face didn't have a bandage on it and there was no sign of any wound. His eyes strayed to her belly again, then up to her face.

Yeah, it was Boomer alright.

Or not.

But not-Boomerlooked just like Boomer. A twin? So they were twin sisters... was that why Starbuck was trying to shoot her? Starbuck didn't like twins? Or maybe it was just some random thing, maybe she did this all the time, yelled _Cylon_ and then pulled the gun.

Confirmed. Starbuck was crazy.

'Oh c'mon Helo, you serious?' Starbuck's voice echoed round the hallway.

'She's pregnant. With my child. And I won't let you hurt her.'

'She's a frakking Cylon! She's a _thing_, Helo, a frakking machine.' OK, now this was getting scary. Starbuck was now beyond crazy, and not-Boomer was looking not-well, propping herself up on the side of the door to stay upright and now Sun was stepping forward and standing by her and Hurley wanted to applaud or cheer or something because it seemed to him that _that _was the right thing to do, and he'd have stood there too if Kate and Sayid hadn't been standing in the way and he'd have had to shove them aside to get past and he was a big guy and the corridor was narrow and sheesh that gun was making him nervous. He was shaking and coming out in a sweat and even being near Starbuck was giving him the heebies.

'It's not like that. She's not like that. She's different. And if you put the frakking attitude away for long enough then you might get to see that.' Helo was hissing in Starbuck's ear and they were still up really close and personal, like mashed together. It looked kind of intimate, but he guessed you'd have to keep a good hold on Starbuck because that girl could wriggle and do all sorts of weird ninja stuff. Last thing anyone wanted was Starbuck pulling a ninja move like she had with Sayid on the beach that time.

'So Boomer's a Cylon?' Racetrack's voice, coming from right next to him, both comforted and alarmed him. Comforted because she was sensible and might stop this thing getting crazier, alarmed because he didn't want her getting Starbuck even more wound up by mentioning the whole Cylon thing.

Hurley didn't like the way this thing was moving, especially when Kate and Sayid looked at each other like they wanted to do something dumb - the kind of something that usual got someone killed, someone he cared about, like Libby or Shannon or even Ana Lucia, though she had done her share of dumb as well. And now Kate and Sayid were slowly edging closer to Starbuck and the new guy, both balanced on the balls of their feet, ready to jump her. Hurley took another step back toward the door. Since Sun had made the bold move of walking towards pregnant not-Boomer and was busy doing some girl bonding thing, it came as no surprise to see that Jin had now moved there himself and added another body to the wall of muscle between Starbuck and whoever she was after now. Poor guy probably didn't understand a word. But then it wasn't exactly making sense to anyone else either. Speaking English didn't seem to be helping any. But anyone with eyes could see that this was rapidly turning into a train wreck.

'So is she, Helo? Is Boomer really a Cylon?' Racetrack was walking closer and talking direct to the new guy now like she knew him as well. They had the same uniform, so he guessed that made them buddies. How many of them were there, anyway, and why did they keep popping up on the Island? Not that Hurley was complaining, some of them were really nice - except when they starting shooting - and had everyone forgot that Jack was in there trying to save Charlie and they were supposed to be quiet?

'Yeah. She's a Cylon.'

'But I was there when she nuked the BaseStar.'

More silence. 'Like I said, they're not all the same.' Helo had relaxed his grip a little on Starbuck and she was kind of slumped back against the wall, watching Helo with horror.

The Cylon thing was bad, right? Starbuck had accused him of being one when she held the gun to his head. And now Boomer? No way. He turned back down the corridor and started walking away from all toward the exit, not even sure what he was going to do, but he liked Boomer and she was Racetrack's friend - kind of - and there wasn't much point hanging around here waiting for Starbuck to shoot anyone else. And OK, he was scared and he'd go back to the camp like Jack had told them and make sure Boomer was OK. Maybe he could hide her somewhere.

'What happened to you Helo? They get to you? How the frak did you get here anyway?' Hurley kept walking, the voices echoing up the corridor behind him.

'Look, when you've calmed down I can explain...'

'How the hell did you even find her? How many frakking Boomers are there anyway?'

'Her name's Sharon.'

'Yeah. 'course it is.'

'Drop the attitude, Starbuck, I-'

'Oh c'mon Helo. I get it. I know what you felt for her, I just - frak! She a frakking Cylon, don't you get that?'

'Yeah, I get it. And I've had longer to get it than you have. Now she needs to rest and lie down and you need to get out of here and-'

Without thinking Hurley turned around and took a step back toward them. 'Hey! HEY!' the last bellowed shout finally got everyone's attention, then all eyes turned to him and he immediately regretted his impulsiveness. 'Look, maybe we could take this outside because Jack is in there trying to save Charlie and he needs all the help he can get and surgeons need quiet, right? And you're being kind of loud out here and if that gun goes off it's going to get even louder, so c'mon, how about we take it outside?' The last part trailed off as he realized that after glancing at him briefly, Starbuck and the new guy were staring at each other again. And the gun hadn't moved.

'Hey.' Apollo's voice. 'He's right. We should go back to the camp and-'

'She needs to rest. She nearly lost the baby and now she needs to lie down.'

'Oh for frak's sake!'

'Bring her to the beach camp. And that's an order, Lieutenant. If you're still following orders, that is.'

'With all due respect, Sir-'

'Hey. Helo, it's fine. I'm fine. We'll go to the camp.' Gah, she sounded just like Boomer.

'But the Doc said you had to lie down and-'

'No. It's OK.'

'Fine. So we all go.'

Hurley pushed the hatch door open. Not good. Not good. He was so tired of people being mean.. Why couldn't they all just get along?


	76. Return

Chapter 76

Return

'And they just appeared?'

'Yes Sir.'

'But not at the same time.'

'No. But it was only a few seconds between them.'

'And you say it was right after you jumped back to the fleet?'

'That's right, Sir.'

'You notice anything else? Anything out of the ordinary?'

'No Sir.'

'Alright. You can go.'

Skulls snapped to attention, Crashdown right behind him, leaving Adama staring at the row of cells after they'd gone. Desmond looked on uncomfortably. It brought back memories of the smell of alcohol and the man swaying at the bars, gun in hand. Desmond watched him quietly, meeting his gaze with a steady frown of his own. He didn't like this man. He was unpredictable and unstable. And angry.

'Guess they know where we are,' the drunken Colonel - sober this time - muttered under his breath, causing Adama to turn toward him, leaving Desmond with a tiny slither of satisfaction for not being the one to break eye contact first. OK, so it was petty, but Desmond was getting sick of all this. He didn't want to be here.

'So they're tracking us?' The Colonel asked.

'How else would they time it so they landed on that Raptor right when it was back with the fleet?'

A grunt of admission. 'But how the hell did they just appear out of nowhere?'

'Skulls said it happened right when they jumped.'

More thoughtful looks their way. Desmond wasn't sure why the two men were having this conversation there, right in front of them. Either they didn't think it mattered, or they were feeding them lines or had some other perverted agenda that Desmond could only guess at. But he could see that Adama was carefully watching, eyes flicking over the three prisoners in their cells, gauging their reactions to what he and the colonel were saying.

No answers forthcoming from him, because he really didn't know anything. Nothing that made sense anyway. Perhaps the blonde woman knew what was going on, but she'd passed out somewhere between taking on the guy in the plane and getting dragged into this cell. Now she was lying awkwardly on the floor; they hadn't even bothered laying her on the bunk. Desmond had at least figured that bit out - the first time anyone did the jump thing it knocked them out, but after that it was zing zing zing, eyes wide open, don't even blink. Brain re-booting according to Daniel Faraday. Desmond sighed. How long would he be here this time? He was so tired of this. Tired of being here. Tired of being locked up. Tired of the guns and the fear and the constant jumping around.

'This isn't as sinister as it looks,' Locke broke the silence, causing all of them to snap their attention over to his cell. He had a reassuring half smile on his face that came off more creepy than comforting. He got the cold hard stare for a good few seconds, another drawn out, uncomfortably aggressive silence and then they were gone, leaving Locke's statement hanging in the air. More mind games. Not that Desmond cared. Though his _not caring _was wearing a little thin. Even so, he had barely registered the guns this time round, his only emotion one of growing irritation at the uncomfortable walk down here. _Again_. Been there, done it. Being pushed into the familiar cell, the familiar walls, familiar bars. The guard must have remembered which cell was his. _Far left._ John Locke in the center and the blonde woman to the far right. Where Laura had been.

'So what happens now?' Locke asked, staring at the hatch door that had just swallowed up the two men.

Desmond shrugged.

'Hey.' Locke called over to one of the guards, to be greeted only by a flat, blank stare. 'What's your name?'

The guard didn't answer. No surprises there. Desmond lay back on the bed. Perhaps he could make himself sleep until all of this was over. He shut his eyes and willed himself to drift off, shutting out everything around him, running through memories of Penny to try to distract him from what was happening in the cell. He was half way through the long drive to Carlisle when he heard a woman's voice, still thick with tiredness.

'Where are we?'

'You're awake.'

Desmond opened one eye to see the blonde woman sitting up. She was still on the floor of the cell, still dressed in a skimpy red outfit more at home in a fashion show than in this place.

'What is this? Who are you?' The blonde woman was looking fearfully around, taking in the bars, the small room, the guards in the corner.

'Name's John. John Locke' Locke put his hand through the bars separating them. Locke's back was to him now, but Desmond could see the Blonde's expression of surprise and confusion as she stared at his hand. She didn't take it.

'It was a trap,' she said quietly, looking at Locke as if he was the one responsible, not seeming to get that he was in the prison with her.

'I don't think so. I think it was just bad luck.'

'Where are we?'

Locke shrugged. 'I have no idea.'

She smoothed down her red dress, incongruous here in the dark muted grays of the prison. She looked like one big smear of lipstick, he thought dryly. A bold red mark-

'You got a name?' Desmond could hear the smile in Locke's voice.

She hesitated. 'Caprica Six.' she said quietly.

'_Caprica Six? _Unusual name.'

'We were on the Base Star,' she frowned, 'No, we were on the Raider, I was piloting the raider and then the Basestar, now here...' Her voice trailed off. 'What happened?'

'Magic.'

'Magic?'

'Poof!' Locke snapped his fingers and Desmond couldn't help a cynical smile. 'Seems like the most reasonable explanation. Appearing out of thin air.' he turned to Desmond. 'What do you think?'

Desmond shook his head.

'You still looking for science to explain all this?'

He was about to say that he wasn't looking for any explanation at all, when all the alarms went off, a voice over a loudspeaker counting down, '_Jump in five, four, three, two...'_

00000

'Sawyer!'

He spun around, alarmed at how close the voice was and how he hadn't heard anyone come up behind him. '_Kate_?' She emerged breathless from the trees and stood right in front of him, her chest heaving. 'Where've you been?' she asked. 'You disappeared.'

He stared at her for a long moment, making some effort to keep his gaze on her face. She looked exactly the same. _Exactly _the same. He cleared his throat

'Did you go to the crashed plane?'

'_What_?'

'You got a gun.' she said, smiling provocatively as she reached over and patted the back of his pants. What the hell? He flinched and pulled back, disturbed by the immediate rush of heat that filled his whole body. 'You get that from the plane?' she asked.

He swallowed hard.

'Apollo's still got the rifle,' she carried on conversationally. 'And there are two more now. I don't like it. I don't know what they're up to, but-' she shrugged.

He was still staring at her, completely unable to speak. His whole body was humming with her presence. It was worse that she looked the same. Much worse, because his body remembered her exactly like that. Not that he wanted to remember her. He didn't. He wasn't feeling so good about himself right now, he didn't like the way his body was responding to her in spite of his feeble attempts to tell himself not to. He took a deep slow breath and tried to think with his mind and not the various parts of his anatomy that were screaming for attention.

'Jack's operating on Charlie,' she said quickly. 'There's a medical station,' she pointed up to the trail behind him, taking two steps in that direction. He watched her silently, swiveling his body so that he was still facing her. She took another step and then paused, looking at him more intently. 'You OK? You look... different. You done something to your hair? '

He stood staring for a beat, two beats, and when he didn't answer she carried on. 'I was just bringing Jack some food and water.' she held up her back pack. 'You coming?'

'Huh?'

'To the medical station, to see if Charlie-'

'_Charlie_?' His mouth suddenly felt dry.

'Yeah. Like I said, Jack's operating and- are you OK?'

'Huh?'

'Sawyer, what's going on?'

He was still staring, still not making any sense of this, still wanting to take three steps back and run from this woman or three steps forward and bury his head in her neck and smell her. He took a deep slow breath. He had to find Juliet.

'C'mon, it's this way.' She didn't wait for his answer but started walking ahead, leaving him standing there for a precious few seconds watching her ass moving ahead through the trees. She was just the same. And Charlie? Why the hell was she talking about Charlie? He was dead. Surely he was dead? He shook the image out of his head and started walking after her. This didn't make sense. Goddammit, what the hell was going on now?

00000

_Trees. Birds. Sunlight. Green. Jungle. Island..._

_Island._

Desmond's head snapped up. _Island?_ He was lying in a clearing, shafts of sunlight breaking through onto brown earth. The prison gone. _Poof_! Just like that. Like magic. He blinked, waiting for the cell to reappear, the drab colors to reestablish themselves. Of course they didn't. Because he never went back. He should have learnt that when he left Penny behind. He lay his head back and looked up at the sky through the trees above him. He was still lying on his back in exactly the same position. Only now it was hard earth and not the prison bunk he was lying on. And there was a stick or something hard sticking into his right shoulder. He shut his eyes for a moment and then re-opened them. He didn't know why he kept doing that. It really didn't make any difference.

There was a stream nearby. He could hear it, the soft sound of running water, birdcalls overlaying it and then the faint buzz of insects. And fresh air. Gloriously, earth wrenchingly fresh air. Gulps of it, lung fulls of it. And the breeze on his face... The taste of freedom. He sat up slowly, half expecting another gun, another sour-faced expression from another soldier with their finger on another trigger. But for once he was met only by gentle light through high trees, leaves moving softly above him. He was in heaven. Or on the Island. He'd never thought of it as heaven before. He must really be losing his mind.

'Well this is new.' Locke's voice came from somewhere over his left shoulder and he turned to see him standing a little ways off, already picking his way down to the stream.

The blonde woman was there too, looking around, her eyes wide with shock and fear.

'Where are we?' The blonde was looking like she was about to panic now.

'On the Island.'

'The Island?'

'Yeah.' Locke squinted up at the sky, then looked around, 'We'll need to get to some high ground to be sure, but my guess is that's North.'

'North?' The woman was echoing his words, clearly not having any idea about what he was saying. 'What happened to the others? The Eight...'

'Eight? There were more?'

'Sharon.' She said quickly. 'Where is she?'

Locke looked around, Desmond following his movement as if they both expected to see Sawyer and the other two emerging from the bushes around them. 'Maybe they'll show up once we get moving.' He bent down and snapped off a large stick, trying out the weight in his hands like a club.

Desmond didn't say anything. They were back on the Island, for who knew how long. Not London, not space, but here, back where he'd started, where it had all begun when Locke had smashed the computer and he'd activated the fail safe. The hatch. He wasn't going back there. He had to get off the Island, find Penny.

'So. Who are you?' Locke was asking the woman.

She looked up at him sharply, thinking a moment before she responded. 'I'm a Cylon.' she said finally, definitively, with a hint of defiance.

'A Cylon. Right.' Desmond could see Locke thinking back to the conversation with Helo and Sharon. Desmond couldn't remember much of it, he had a vague recollection of something to do with enemies and wars but he'd let most of it wash over him. 'Guess we'd better get moving then.' Was all Locke said. Looked like he hadn't really been listening either.

'Where?'

'Back to the camp. South.' Locke squinted up at the light through the trees. 'We've got a few hours before dark, so I guess we should use them.'

The woman looked like she was going to say something, but then she just nodded and took a step towards the stream.

'Yeah, I recommend you drink something. Might be a while before we find some more.'

And that was it. They were on the move. John Locke walking quietly in front of them, a large stick now in one hand, his movements stealthy as he led them South.


	77. Long Con

Chapter 77

Long Con

Kate moved ahead of him without speaking, effortlessly navigating fallen branches and tangled roots, her stride light and determined. He followed her without speaking, clumsily aware that he was moving without her grace and style, trying to resist the urge to watch her ass moving in her jeans and focus on the trail instead. This was crazy. His life was crazy. Deep breath. Focus on the trail. He was with Juliet now. _Happy _with Juliet. If he ever found her again.

How the hell had they taken her? He swore he'd never even blinked, he'd kept his eyes on hers, hadn't he? Or had he looked over to the girl in the tub? Yeah, _Goddammit_, he had, he remembered bathtub-girl throwing her head back that way, calling out the word _jump_. And in that tiny moment Juliet had been taken from him and he'd let it happen. And now they'd dumped him here and Juliet was where? In danger? With Ben? He'd lost her, in spite of everything he'd said to her, all his promises and assurances. Empty words. Now she was gone. And for some inexplicable reason he was here, with Kate. Was that the point? To taunt him? Or maybe all of this was on camera and Ben was making Juliet watch. Well there was nothing to see. Except for Kate's ass. And he sure wasn't looking.

He glared at the trees, imagining where the hidden cameras could be, still walking in silence behind Kate, not knowing where the hell they were going. She could be leading him anywhere. It was a good few minutes before he saw a landmark he recognized. There it was, an old tree, its roots gnarled and twisted. He and Kate had rested there when they were making it back from the small Island. From what he could remember it wasn't so far to the camp. There was still no sign of anyone else, though Sawyer was under no illusions as to why he'd been separated and dumped here on his own. Ana Lucia might be dead, but he was sure that Ben could find someone else to shove a stake through his heart.

What bothered him most was that the bug-eyed bastard would delight in bringing Juliet to look at his dead body. He checked that the gun was still stuffed down the back of his pants. No question, one sight of the guy and he was shooting first.

He kept his eyes on the back of Kate's head, on the trail, on the trees and bushes around them. It looked like a herd of elephants had been through here. There were slash marks where someone had cut a wide swathe through the undergrowth - like if a stretcher had been brought this way and they'd hacked their way through to make room for it. But that had been months ago, Charlie had probably walked here this time round.

He remembered carrying Charlie down to the beach that time; the blood, the searing, screaming pain in his muscles. Not something he wanted to repeat. He automatically looked down to see if there were any blood stains marking the trail beneath his feet, then kicked himself for his stupidity. It had been three and a half months. He was surprised Charlie was still alive. Maybe he was paralyzed and they'd had to carry him? That had to be it - the gunshot must have hit his spine and now Jack was doing his surgeon thing to try and...

'It's just up here,' Kate paused to gesture to a small thicket ahead. She turned and frowned at him, her head to one side. 'You think that plane will come back?'

'Plane?'

'... because I can't see anyone sleeping on the beach tonight. Even Rose will have to move.'

_What the hell?_

'...The way it stopped in mid air. That was kind of weird, don't you think? I don't like it. Who'd you think's behind all this?' She turned right around to face him fully. 'And more of them keep arriving - it's like every day there's a new one.'

'What you talking about? Who's arrived?' He felt a flare of hope that she might have seen something, that Juliet might be-

'The military. With the funky names - Boomer and Racetrack, then Starbuck and the guys Jack found and now this new guy... What's that all about anyway? I mean three sets of planes all crashing here - four if you count the new one. All in the space of, what, the last five days? I don't like it. And those are only the ones we know about. How do we know there aren't more? Jack found Apollo and the Chief on the other side of the Island, who's to say the rest of the Island isn't crawling with them as well? And if they _were _on our side they'd have tried to contact their people and rescued us by now. It ain't right.'

He was gawping at her, no words coming out of his mouth, his mind desperately trying to piece together what she had just said.

'Jack's been too busy saving Charlie, but there's more going on here.. They've been here five days and already they're taking over. We should do something before there are any more of them. Before they make their move.'

Sawyer felt his jaw go completely slack and the felt a cold wash of betrayal fill him from the ground up. What the hell was going on? It had been nearly four months – four months and, what, she was acting like it had all just happened? That the pilots had just arrived? He couldn't believe she was doing this – whatever it was.

But Kate wasn't like that, she was full of fire and passion and _goddammit_, she wouldn't do this.

So he was drugged?

So he was crazy.

Or none of the above.

'C'mon, we'd better get moving.' With that she turned back to the trail, leaving him to stumble awkwardly behind her. He shambled after her blindly, his mind reeling, trying to get a grip on the fact that Kate was in on it too. This was bad. So bad.

'It's here.' Kate had arrived at a heavy steel door partially hidden by vines and branches. It wasn't exactly camouflaged, but it was well hidden. With a heave she forced the door open, revealing a long corridor lit by a flickering fluorescent light. She paused to give him a flirtatious smile that made his guts clench, and then sicken with disgust. She was playing him. Oh how she was playing him. She didn't stop to gauge his reaction, but immediately made her way down the corridor, disappearing from his sight for a moment before he stepped through to follow her. The dim light made him have to blink to see, but there she was ahead, ass still swaying, moving quickly down the passageway. He trotted after her, catching up as she halted in front of a nondescript gray metal door. 'They're in here.' she said.

He took a step forward to open the door, halted by Kate's hand on his chest. The gesture felt too intimate, too easy, with her face right up close. He frowned. Yeah, she was definitely playing him. And there'd be cameras in here for sure, and Juliet was probably standing by a monitor somewhere watching this fiasco. He took a step back. 'Jack said we can't go in. They have to keep it sterile,' He held his breath and watched with narrowed eyes as she turned her back to him and banged on the door once.

'Jack? It's me, Kate. I've brought you some food and-' The door opened quickly and ah, Jack was there, looking every bit the haunted hero, all stressed and worried in full surgeon gear; blue scrubs and one of those dumb looking shower caps on his head. He had a surgeon's mask pulled jauntily down over his neck, blood splattered on it and all down the front of his gown. He really did look the hero. Saint Jack saving the world from death and disease. It made Sawyer want to puke.

'Is he awake?' Kate was asking in an almost whisper. Jack glanced into the room behind him, then turned back to her and shook his head. Sawyer almost laughed as he dramatically took a deep breath, staring up the empty corridor, the pathos oozing out of him. 'We stopped the bleeding, but I don't know if we got it in time...' he let the words trail off into nothing.

Sawyer sighed impatiently. What the hell? Stopped the bleeding? Like this right now was three and a half months ago? Like he'd picked up where they'd all left off. He felt like slow clapping Ben for this ridiculous show. Because, yeah, it had Ben stamped all over it. Not only had he spent three and a half freaking months in a small tin box with two delusional crazy people, now he had to suffer hearing the people he knew and trusted - well, kinda trusted - spout the crap as well. It was getting so old. Charlie had long since stopped bleeding to death and was either dead or sitting in there eating pizza and laughing his butt off. How much were they all being paid? Or maybe they were just in it for the ride. He hadn't exactly been the most popular guy in the camp, so it wasn't such a stretch to imagine them all doing this out of some twisted desire to get back at him.

He took another involuntary step back as he watched Kate hold up the little lunch box she'd brought for Jack. God, that was so damn sweet.

'He'll be out for a while yet,' Jack was saying, giving Kate an uncertain smile and shifting to the side so that finally the doorway was revealed and Sawyer could finally see through into the operating room. And there was Charlie right on cuestill with his pants on, his shirt discarded on the floor and yeah, same theme; Charlie looked just the same. His clothes were just the same. Covered in blood and ripped where Jack had tried to get to him fast. And the blood was still bright and wet. No time to dry. Give them a medal for authenticity. There was even a bag of blood on an IV line running into his arm. So Charlie was in on it too, huh? And he thought they'd been getting along just fine...

'You gave him blood?' Kate's words penetrated Sawyer's thoughts, pulling him back to the conversation. She was anxiously scanning Jack's arms as if the stupid bastard would have stuck a tube in his arm and pulled the blood out of himself.

Jack didn't notice the concern in her voice because his reply was flat and distracted. 'Yeah. They store it here.'

'And they've had this here all the time?' Kate was looking around, fire in her eyes and if he wasn't so pissed at what was going on he'd have agreed with her - all this high tech medical stuff right here when they'd all spent months on that beach with nothing, watching people die who might have been saved. But he didn't have the time or energy to bother getting into that. Things were different now. Way different. And for once Jack seemed on the same page because he wasn't going there either.

'Look, Kate, I need you to do something. I need you to go with Juliet and-'

_Juliet_? Sawyer's head snapped around at the name, his mind suddenly honed and crystal clear, his eyes searching desperately into the space through the door. He took a step forward but all he could see was Charlie, blood, the smell of disinfectant, Jack's irritating bulk still hiding half the doorway. And then she was there, stepping into his line of sight, in her hospital scrubs, looking awkward, shoulder to shoulder just a little behind Jack. She was nervous, scared, her eyes darting around, skimming over Kate before fixing on him, widening with surprise and shock when she recognized him. He took a fast step forward. 'Juliet!' his voice sounding desperate and ragged even to his own ears.

'Back off, Sawyer. She's with me.' Jack took a quick side step, closing the gap in the doorway, one arm out in front of him.

_What?_ Sawyer took another step forward, pushing Jack's hand aside and allowing his body make contact with Jack's to push past him to get to her. The next moment he felt himself being slammed hard against the far wall. 'I said _she's with me_, Sawyer. She's under my protection, so leave her alone.'

He stared at Jack incredulously, then over his shoulder to where Juliet was almost wringing her hands. He was a millisecond away from punching Jack's lights out when Juliet took a step forward. 'It's OK.' She took a deep breath. 'I'm fine. I'm sure he'll be fine.' She was looking nervously over at him, and he could see it in her eyes. She looked scared. She was scared of him. _What the hell?_

'You need to back off, Sawyer. Juliet's here with me. She's helping us now. So you need to calm down and-'

He blanked out the rest of what Jack was saying, his whole being attuned to what was going on with Juliet. She looked exhausted, and there was something she was telling him, something she was asking him, her eyes pleading with him. _What the hell was going on?_ He stilled and waited. 'We need to hurry,' she said quietly.

'Yeah.' Jack's pressure eased off and he took a half step back, leaving Sawyer still pinned against the wall. 'Take Kate. Sawyer can wait here, and-'

'What's going on?' Kate was looking uneasily between Jack and Juliet.

Jack didn't take his eyes of Sawyer. 'There's some medicine hidden in a drop off point.' he said, 'I need you to go with Juliet and take it to Claire.'

'Claire? Medicine for Claire? But Claire's OK. I just left her at the beach.'

'There's a chip in her.' Juliet said quickly. 'The transmitter was in my backpack. It was activated and now she's going be very sick unless I get the antidote into her.'

Kate was frowning. 'What?'

'It was Ben.' Jack said harshly. 'Juliet didn't have a choice.'

Sawyer felt his blood running cold. _Ben?_ Juliet was working for Ben? He felt his knees giving way. She was working for Ben? She'd been working for him all this time?

'We need to hurry.' Juliet said again. 'I'll, um, get washed up and then- She glanced back to where Charlie was still lying on the operating table, and with a last, flustered glance at Sawyer she stepped back and out of his sight.

'What the hell's going on?' Kate was hissing at Jack. 'What is this?'

'Just go with her, Kate.'

'Go where? What, she's hurting Claire now?'

'No, it wasn't like that. Look, she's explained it all. And I trust her. Just go with her, get the medicine and give it to Claire. I'm going to stay here with Charlie. Just do this, Kate. For me. OK?'

Sawyer decided he'd heard enough. He turned and stumbled out of the tunnel, hurling himself out of the hatch door and into the thick of the jungle, gulping in the air. Juliet was working for Ben. Least that's what she had just said. Working for Ben. How? When? All that time? So had it all been a trick? A sick joke? No. She wouldn't do that. She couldn't- And what the hell was she doing with Jack anyway? How had she gotten to be there in the first place? This was a set up. All a set up. Had to be. He'd been played. God, he was such a sucker. A long con. She'd probably been playing him for months and he'd fallen for it. All of it. Ben had gotten to him through Juliet. That had probably been the plan all along. His one big weakness; women. Or this particular woman. He'd fallen so hard, felt more than he'd ever let himself before, and now-

'James?' her touch was gentle familiar, he spun around, startling like she'd burned him, pulling away, not daring to let himself get anywhere near her.

'You're working for Ben?' he felt like retching out the words, puking them all over the forest floor.

'No! I mean, yes, I was. But I'm not now - it's, look-'

'So where are we going?' Kate emerged from the tunnel right behind her, standing in front of them with an expectant look on her face. Juliet gave him a look of aching desperation before she sighed and turned away. 'It's this way,' she said quietly, the defeat clear in her voice.


	78. Down and Dirty

Chapter 78

Down and Dirty

Juliet was already several paces ahead, the familiar military issue tank and sweatpants blending into the shadows as she disappeared from sight. Kate gave him a sympathetic thump on the back and pushed ahead, leaving him to follow. Or not. Hell, he could just stand here looking at the trees, not go there at all, dodge whatever bullet was waiting for him. Yeah, he could pass on that one. But like a fool he let his legs start moving and soon he found himself stumbling after Kate, picking up speed as the undergrowth swallowed her up too. Kate was pissed, he could see that - he knew her well enough to know what that tight lipped silence meant, the staccato movements, the stiff set of her shoulders. All too familiar.

'How far is it?' He was a couple of paces behind her when Kate shouted ahead, causing Juliet to slow, then stop and turn, meeting Kate's gaze square on in that way she had - that way she hadn't used on _him _in a long time. The one where she was on one side of the line, him on the other and she didn't give a crap about what he thought about it. Kate stiffened and straightened, like she was getting ready for a fight.

Then he watched in surprise as Juliet folded. Suddenly, completely. 'It's just up here.' Juliet gave a weary sigh, pointedly not looking at him before she turned and continued, a lone figure pushing her way through the undergrowth. She looked tired. Dog tired, like she'd been there forever and was dragging herself through the scene as if it were the last thing on earth she wanted to do. He felt a small thread of pity, stretching his stride to try and catch up with her. It would help if he had half a handle on what was happening. He caught up with Kate and slowed a little. Juliet was still a few paces ahead but she felt like a million miles away. Of course he knew that people changed. People could change on a dime. And he'd played his share of cons to know how that worked, how easy it was to drop the act once the job was done. He'd just never felt it happen to him before. And now there she was, Juliet: stranger.

He turned to Kate instead. 'So what's going on? When did Juliet get here?'

Kate shrugged. 'Couple of hours ago. Just after you went MIA.'

Ah, he'd almost forgotten that Kate was playing _that_ game. Well, his MIA had lasted over three months and he hadn't been there a couple of hours ago. He gritted his teeth and fought for control. Yelling wasn't going to help. It had been dumb to turn to Kate for answers. Stupid to think even for a moment there that he and Kate were on the same side.

It took him two long strides to catch up with Juliet. He moved up until he was right by her, leaning down to mutter, 'So you working for Ben now?' He tried to keep his tone neutral, but he couldn't keep the bitter twist from his voice, his throat, his whole goddamn soul.

'No. This was...' she paused and took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a second before she stopped and turned fully, causing him to almost bump into her. She gave one furtive, nervous glance at Kate still a few paces behind before she began talking quickly and urgently. 'You remember being with Helo and Sharon - in that... in that hatch? For months?' she was whispering now, rushed and hurried, like this was the biggest secret in the universe. Or the biggest lie.

He stared at her incredulously. 'You telling me that didn't happen?'

'No! No - I was... I was just checking it was really you.'

'Me? Right.' He could feel his jaw clenching hard.

'Haven't you figured it out yet? We're in the past, James, We got sent back to right when we left. _This _is three and a half months ago,' she took a deep breath, pausing again to gauge his reaction. 'I saw us,' she said quietly, 'At the plane - I saw us falling into it and then disappearing. You and me. And now we're here with god knows how many other version of us walking about.'

Suddenly his mind felt numb. Real numb. Not like ice-cream or diving into cold water, no, this was more than that. This was shock like the world had stopped. His ears stopped hearing anything and Juliet sort of blurred out in front of him. He really couldn't believe she was doing this.

'You remember what Desmond said? About us traveling through space and time? Well I think he was right. I think it was true. Ask her when she last saw you.' Juliet nodded over at Kate with that determined, intense expression that told him she was serious, more than serious. He followed her gaze, finding Kate standing a couple of paces off, watching him and Juliet with a mix of suspicion and curiosity. She took a step forward when she caught him watching, coming right up to his shoulder and squaring off at Juliet like she and him were together. He saw Juliet wince, a tiny, almost imperceptible flinch, then a straightening of her shoulders and that same haunted look that told him that she was now completely and utterly alone. She looked out at him with haunted eyes. 'Ask her.' she said again.

'Ask me what? What's going on?'

He turned to Kate, then back to Juliet, meeting Juliet's eyes and seeing nothing in them but steel. 'Fine. How long I been gone, Kate?' He kept his eyes on Juliet.

'What?'

'When'd you last see me?'

'Is there a point to this?'

He didn't say anything but stared at Juliet and waited.

Kate hesitated. 'At the camp - you were there when that plane attacked-'

'Which was how long ago?'

'Coupl'a hours. Listen, what's this about?'

'I knew this already,' he said quietly, 'Just means she's in on it.'

'What? In on what?' Kate was looking confused. Sawyer never took his eyes off of Juliet.

Juliet sighed and then looked away. 'We need to hurry.' She turned and started striding ahead again, leaving him with Kate.

'What's going on, Sawyer?'

He watched Juliet disappearing ahead, then shook his head. 'Wish I knew.'

'I don't trust her. What the hell are they doing, putting chips in people?'

Yeah, Juliet had said that, hadn't she? He started moving again, this time running to catch up with her. 'So talk.' he said, careful not to touch her. 'What's with the chip?'

'The transmitter was in my back pack. I left it when we... when we went to the... hatch. Space ship. Whatever it was.'

He scrunched his eyes up. So she really was buying into this now?

'Look, it was Ben's idea, and then Sayid had the back pack and he turned on the transmitter, and now I'm trying to fix it, OK?'

'Transmitter?'

'Ben wanted you all to trust me, so he thought that if he made Claire sick - really sick - and then I fixed it, then you'd think I was on your side. It was his way of getting me into your camp.' She paused. 'It was before - before the hatch, before we fell in that plane.'

He frowned, confused. Juliet glanced at his face and carried on speaking. 'When the chip's activated it releases a chemical, a poison. I'm the only one with access to the antidote.'

'Right. So you knew about this for the last three and a half months and you didn't think about telling me?'

'I wasn't going to activate it-'

'Hey,' Kate caught up, breathless, looking suspiciously between Sawyer and Juliet. 'What's going on?'

'Juliet was just talking about the chip.'

At that point Juliet stopped walking and turned to face him. 'OK. Fine. I should have told you.'

'Told you what?' Kate asked.

He gave her a surprised glance, then shifted his focus back to Juliet. 'So why didn't you?'

'Like I said, I wasn't going to use it.'

'And now here we are. With you using it. And working for Ben.'

'I'm not working for Ben.'

'Is he here? With cameras?' Sawyer turned around and scanned the undergrowth around them.

Her expression hardened and her stance was more wary now. 'I don't know.'

'So what, you've met him, had a cozy chat?'

'This isn't about Ben, James. I don't think he's got anything to do with all this. I think Helo was right, I-'

'You think _Helo_ was right - what, the spaceship, the intergalactic war, freaking _Picon_?'

She was silent then, her expression hardening. 'I don't like it either, but I saw us - we were there, by the plane, exactly like we were three and half months ago, acting the whole thing out.'

'Yeah, and that's it - _acting_ - it's all an act, Juliet! What, you think I'm stupid? You think I'm going to buy all this just because it's _you_?'

'No, I-'

'I thought we really had something, but now looks like you were playing me all along. Well fine, I fell for it. Happy now?'

'When will you get it that this isn't about you? This is bigger than you, bigger than _us_, something else is going on here that-'

'Oh, save the speeches, Blondie. It ain't gonna work.'

'I don't need this, James...'

'So what else ain't you told me? And what the hell were you doing with Charlie - you in on that as well?'

'What?'

'Oh come on - that's all one big act too, ain't it?'

'It's not an act, James. He nearly died. Twice. And even now he-'

'Why are you doing this? I don't buy it, so why keep on going?'

'You are so dumb.' She shook her head, looked like she was holding back tears. 'Look, I've been here over ten hours, I'm tired and I just want to get the antidote to Claire-'

'Ten hours? Right. Like we weren't in that hatch ten hours ago-'

'I wasn't. I was here. Trying to keep Sharon's baby alive-'

'Sharon?' he turned quickly, as if she would emerge from the trees.

Juliet seemed to sag, defeated. 'Or you think was all an illusion too. And in case you ask, the baby's fine.'

He paused, taking in that piece of information, chewing his lip and trying to at least keep his breathing even. 'So where's Helo?'

'I don't know, they all went off someplace. I was too busy trying to save Charlie's life to ask.'

Kate was silent, still standing next to him, watching their exchange.

'Look, we need to hurry.' Juliet, brushed past him and carried on walking, then she paused and turned. 'But for the record, I think Helo was right. All along. About everything. We were the dumb ones.' This time he let her pull away and didn't follow her.

'What was that all about?' Kate still there, talking again.

'Hell if I know.' He hesitated, then started walking more slowly, letting Juliet pull away on her own. Ben must have gotten to her, threatened her, maybe threatened him? That must have been it. That was the best reason he could think of for her to suddenly turn like this. Either that or she really had been working for Ben all along. The sick feeling returned to his stomach.

'You OK?' Kate was watching him with concern.

'Yeah. I'm fine.'

'So really, what _was _that about?'

'Nothin'.'

'Didn't look like nothin'.'

'Yeah, well, sometimes things ain't what they look like.' And with that he started walking after Juliet.

It took another half hour to reach the place where Ben had dumped the medical kit. Juliet stayed ahead the whole time, Sawyer and Kate silently walking behind. Sure she tried to say something a couple of times but his expression must have shut her up. He didn't want to talk to her, didn't want to talk to any of them. He wanted it over with, wanted Ben to cut the crap and make his move. He'd had enough already. He stood a few paces back, arms folded, bored, when Juliet pounced on the little metal medical case and dusted the dirt off of it. He kept the same expression as she turned toward him and started back in the direction of the beach camp. She looked determined and mad, not bothering to even look at him this time. So he'd pissed her off. Well, back at you, baby.

Claire was a shaking, shivering mess by the time they reached the camp. Sawyer scanned the area quickly, taking in the tiny shelters, the people milling about, little Aaron in the crib beside Clare's bed. It all looked the same. Even the baby looked the same. But then all babys did look the same, didn't they? How much would one of them grow in three months? Probably not much, and he wouldn't notice anyway. No clue there, and crap, he didn't even know why he was thinking that what Juliet said could possibly be true - well, except that it would explain why everyone looked _exactly _the same, why they all had on the same clothes, the same smiles and lived in the same little huts. It was eerie. Down to the smallest detail, everything had been put back exactly like it had been three and a half months ago. The way his camp was still trashed where they'd had to move into the dunes to sleep when that plane had attacked them. Everything was the same. Except now he could see Helo and Sharon - Sharon was lying down in Rose's shelter, Helo standing right next to her. Oh and there was Boomer in a little ways off, a sheen of feverish sweat still coating her face. Racetrack was sitting in front of her, rifle in hand like she was guarding her or something.

Of course everyone pretty much ignored him, acted like him being away for nearly four months was no big deal. Most of them hardly glanced up. Some homecoming. He watched as Juliet made her way over to Claire's tent and then Sawyer sauntered quietly over to where Helo was standing. He looked tired and strained, totally out of place here. It was weird to see him in the full sunlight. Sawyer had gotten so used to dim lighting that it was almost a revelation to see the guy in full daylight. Not that Sawyer really cared about seeing him - but at least his moves were familiar. Whatever was going on, Helo had at least been consistent in his lies, Sawyer had the measure of him, whereas the others, all ranged around the beach, they were a different matter.

'She found you then?' Helo said quietly.

'Huh?'

'Juliet.'

'Oh. Yeah.' Sawyer nodded over at Sharon. 'So the baby's OK?'

'Yeah. Be fine so long as Starbuck keeps her cool.'

Starbuck? Starbuck was still glowering, standing sullenly with Apollo on the other side of the camp. 'What's her problem?'

'Cylons. She kind of took it badly.'

Sawyer smiled. He could always count on Helo. Something about a familiar lie that made it all feel that little bit more bearable.


	79. Screw Up

Chapter 79

Screw Up

'... and get yourself under control Lieutenant, because I've had it up to here watching you go off on one.'

'Fine.' Starbuck kept walking, her teeth gritted in irritation. 'But it's not every day you find out that one of you crew is a frakking cylon. Sir.'

'So, what, you pull out your gun and you shoot without even thinking?'

'Something like that.'

'In case you've forgotten, I'm the one giving the orders-'

'Oh for frak's sake - it's a Cylon, Lee! The enemy, remember that? The enemy?'

'It ever occur to you that we might want her alive?'

'What, so you can interrogate it? Like Leobin? You can't reason with them, Lee, you get them talking and they screw with your mind-'

'No. Leobin screwed with _your_ mind, But then you _are _The Screw Up, aren't you, Kara?'

'Just drop it, Lee.'

'No, I can't just drop it. You need to calm down. Take a good look at yourself Kara, because at the moment you are out of control.'

'Maybe I'm just prepared to take action-'

'Oh, right, so shooting innocent civilians is your way of-'

'We don't know he's innocent! He's probably a frakking Cylon-'

'_Probably? _Well, _probably _isn't good enough. What, so you're some self appointed judge and executioner now? You've somehow given yourself the right to shoot whoever you damn well please because you think they _might _be a Cylon? That's screwed up, no, that's more than screwed up, that's just plain wrong.'

Hurley stared in morbid fascination as Starbuck abruptly stopped speaking and then sucked in a deep, slow breath, scrubbing her face with her palms and then running her hands through her hair. He knew he shouldn't be watching, shouldn't be listening, should have moved away, head down, scuttled off in the opposite direction, but he couldn't help but overhear and they'd walked right by him and what was he supposed to do, cover his ears and start singing _la la la_?

'... you need to pull it together, because right now you're turning into something that's-'

'I told you I was a screw up,'

'Yeah, you did. You screw up, you screw around. What do you want me to say, Kara?'

Another deep breath and Starbuck looked like she was about to cry or something. The change had been almost instantaneous, from raging madwoman to something more like a small, lost child. Hurley couldn't have peeled his eyes away now if he'd tried.

'Maybe that's why we never made it, I mean, you're so frakking _good_ and I'm the screw up in the corner.'

Apollo gave something that sounded like a bitter laugh. 'What? Is that what you think? That I've somehow decided I'm better than you? That's bullshit and you know it. This isn't about you and how crap you are, _this _is about you being so frakking scared to let anyone near you because when you do, you just get eaten up with guilt over what you did to Zak. You need to let it go, Kara. Take a good hard look at what you're doing to yourself and anyone who even tries to love you, because at the moment you're not just taking yourself down, you're taking everyone else down with you.'

Starbuck raised her eyebrows in surprise and sucked in another quick breath. Then she frowned and looked over at Apollo. 'Did you just say you loved me?'

'No Kara. I didn't.' Then Apollo stepped away from her and walked back down the beach.

There was an awkward moment where Hurley was left exposed without the cover of a distraction now that Apollo was striding away up the beach. And any moment Starbuck would notice he was there and realize that he'd been listening and then she'd take out her gun and shoot him. He risked a swift glance over at her face; she was standing sideways on, still staring at Apollo's back, her face working with a range of emotions he couldn't describe, though it finally settling on something that looked like hot, embittered rage. And yeah, he'd heard the last part, the part that had made Apollo really mad, the part where they'd talked about Zak. Funny how they'd taken shooting Charlie in stride, had an almost civil conversation until the subject of Zak came up. Hurley felt his heart sink.

This was all his fault. He shouldn't have listened to the dead guy.

This had all gone to hell in a breadbasket the moment he had opened his mouth. And now Starbuck was mad, and Apollo was mad, and they were watching pregnant Boomer like she was going to break out and turn into some monster off of Alien. And it was all his fault. Or the dead guy's. Everyone had been getting along before that. And now Charlie was shot and Jack wasn't there and they had the blond doctor that nobody trusted because she was an _Other _and now Apollo was nearly fifty yards away and Apollo was the only one who could control Starbuck and now her hand was all twitchy near her gun and she was going to take it out of its holster and start shooting everyone. That dead guy must have been evil or something - must have known what would happen, must have known the affect his words would have.

Hurley took a small step backwards. It was more than clear - if it hadn't been before, when Charlie got shot and everything went _kabloowie_ - that he should have kept quiet. He shouldn't have said those things the dead guy had told him to say. Dead guys were bad news; never _ever_ listen to them. And now? If he could make it better he would, but-

He stiffened as Starbuck took a deep breath and dragged her eyes from where Apollo was still striding away over to the water's edged. She turned to face the beach camp, giving a small start when she saw how close he was.

'_You_.' Starbuck eyed him with suspicion. He glanced up at her and then over to where Apollo had stormed off. He'd stopped now by the shore line, still holding the rifle. He couldn't really help from there if Starbuck decided to take them all down - or maybe he could if he tried to shoot her with the rifle. But then Apollo wasn't going to go shooting Starbuck, was he? With a sickening feeling he turned back to Starbuck in time to see her tilt her head and narrow her eyes, giving Hurley a look that made his guts crush in terror.

Hurley cleared his throat, shaking off the thoughts and emotions that screamed at him to burrow down, dig himself a little hole and hide in there. Instead he muttered in a terrified squawk, 'Dude, look, I'm sorry, OK? 'Bout earlier.'

She blinked once, then frowned, staring at him. He had all of her attention now and he didn't like it. He cringed and ducked his head down, trying to hide, then took a deep breath. He had to man up. Had to try and fix it. Make it right. He cleared his throat again. 'I shouldn't have said anything, so, um, sorry.' Starbuck was still staring at him. No, _glaring _at him, hostile.

'So what else was in my file?' she said coldly.

'File?' he echoed, not liking her tone, not liking the way this was going, not liking the spiking clench of fear in his gut. He shouldn't have said anything - shouldn't have tried to apologize. Crap. Why couldn't he keep his big mouth shut?

'Yeah, all that stuff about me. Where's the file?'

He looked down at the sand and took a deep breath. 'No file.' he muttered thinly.

'Oh come on, you can tell me. Hell, I've guessed it already. It's not a big secret. And I'm not stupid.' Her voice had an angry, mocking, almost crooning tone. Even more scary than her angry _'I'm gonna kill you now'_ voice.

'Look, I'm sorry.' He was stumbling over the words now. 'I shouldn't have listened to him, OK?'

'Listened to who?' she was completely focused now. Scarily focused, her whole body straining toward him, to all the clues, seeing how scared he was; the sweat running down his face, under his arms, the tiny tick above his eye that he couldn't stop from twitching.

'That guy,' he stammered out. 'He told me to tell you. It wasn't my idea, OK? If I'd know that-'

'What. Guy?'

'The dead guy, OK?' Her eyes narrowed even further. 'I'm not crazy,' he said defensively, then threw up his arms when her expression didn't change. 'Fine! I talk to dead people! Now you know.'

She looked like she'd been punched in the mouth, the shock evident in her eyes. She almost took a step back, then shook herself.

'He told me to talk to you, wouldn't leave me alone.' He was babbling now, but he didn't care.

'So my dead fiancé just happened to show up and-'

'He was your fiancé?' Hurley felt even sicker now.

'It was in my file.' she said tersely.

'Oh. Well, he didn't tell me that-'

'Yeah, and Lee's his brother.' She nodded over to where Apollo was standing throwing stones angrily toward the waves. '_Was_.' She corrected herself. '_Was _his brother.'

'Oh.' His heart had risen up in his chest and was now sinking further down to somewhere near his knees.

'Looks like you were kept out of the loop.'

'So he came to tell me to tell _you _to get with his brother?' Hurley asked, mouth dry. He felt sick now. Well and truly sick.

She looked at him, frowning. 'How'd you know about the report?' She asked tightly.

'Report?' his voice was barely a whisper.

'Yeah, the one you said he'd seen. I left it lying around the house. And you know what's weird? No one knows about that and I'm pretty damn sure it's not in my file. So how'd you find out?'

'He told me.'

'_Zak_.' She said the word like she hadn't used the name in a long while.

He didn't think his voice could get any drier. 'Yeah.'

'And that stuff about the engine mounting-'

'Look, I just said what he told me-' The look she gave him cut him off and he went silent.

'Right, because you talk to _dead people_.' She spat out the words, making him flinch.

'Hey, I'm not crazy, OK?'

She laughed, a dry bitter sound.

Something inside of him snapped. 'You think I'm crazy. Well I'm not, OK?'

She stared daggers at him, eyes narrowed, her jaw set hard. 'So, what, you said all that to get me riled up, and-'

'No! You think I wanted to say all that? You think I wanted to get you so mad that you totally lost it? Look, if I'd known it was you I wouldn't have said anything. But he said go talk to someone and I didn't know who it was-'

'You really think I'm going to believe all this?'

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. 'No. But for the record, he wouldn't leave me alone. Like it was important. So I did it.'

There was a long moment where she didn't say anything, didn't move, just stood there staring at him. Then she sighed and looked away. 'Even if you had my file there was no way you'd know about that report.'

He shifted uncomfortably. He hated this, hated talking about it, hated the whole dead guy thing. He'd walk away right now if he felt safe enough to turn his back on her. She was staring out over at the ocean, a faraway look in her eyes. 'I thought he hadn't seen it,' she said more quietly. 'I only realized later that I'd left that report lying around and I thought he hadn't seen it. He never said anything. Guess he saw it after all.' She dragged in a deep breath and shook her head.

Hurley held his breath. He wasn't sure what was more disturbing - Starbuck crazy mad or Starbuck kind of melancholy and looking like she believed him. He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, then watched as she sucked in a breath and turned back to him. 'Crazy world, huh?' There was a pause, then her voice, quiet now, almost tentative. 'You see him?'

'Um. Yeah.'

'How'd he look?'

'Kinda determined.' Hurley winced, not sure this was the answer she wanted.

She gave a small laugh, then shook her head, sobering almost immediately. 'Can you see him now?'

'Um, no. He um, ah, he went before-'

'Before I shot Charlie.' She finished the sentence for him and he swallowed hard, not daring to look up at her.

'Yeah.'

They were both silent for a moment, both looking over to Apollo still standing over by the waves. 'And he said to get with Lee,' she said wistfully, almost to herself.

Another uncomfortable shuffle and Hurley really wished himself a million miles away. There was a long, slow silence. 'You do like him, though, right?' he said into the silence.

She shook her head, a half smile playing on her lips.

'I lost someone on this Island,' he said on impulse, the words tripping over themselves. 'Dude, if you don't grab it, well, it's gone, and it's too late, and you can't get it back. That's all.'


	80. Sucker

Chapter 80

Sucker

Sawyer's uneasy feeling wasn't going away. He thought they'd all have slipped up by now - with a look, a glance, some sort of signal between them to give the game away. But he'd been in the camp over half an hour, everyone was ignoring him (including Juliet) - or not ignoring him, exactly- but just getting on with whatever they were doing. Like if they _had_ only seen him only two hours before and it was no big deal that he was there.

And now that Juliet had put that dumb idea into his head he couldn't shake it.

Was it because it was Juliet and he'd stupidly gotten to trust her? Hell, he _wanted _to trust her, wanted her to be telling him the truth – and that alone should make him suspicious.

Nothing like wanting to believe something to make you a sucker.

He'd never been stupid enough to trust anyone before. Always been a loner, always expected the con, expected people to lie and cheat and try to get one over on him. And what he'd seen of Ben made him sure that Ben was both capable and motivated enough to pull this sort of stunt. But the people on the beach - he _knew _these people, he knew what they were like, had lived with them for months before he'd been taken to that hatch, and he knew beyond any reasonable doubt that none of them could pull off something like this without giving themselves away. Even by one look or a glance the wrong way. A whispered word. Anything.

But no, it was picture perfect.

And _nothing _was that perfect. Even he slipped up sometimes. And a whole group? Of these people? They couldn't even agree on what to have for dinner, no way could they pull off something as complicated as this. So that just left... a part of him raised an eyebrow and he almost heard his own voice say _time travel, huh?_ He quashed that thought uneasily, the prickle of nausea bringing with it an acrid taste of bile at the back of his throat. He swallowed hard, took a deep slow breath and looked over to where Juliet was still sitting quietly next to Claire. She was holding the younger woman's hand, saying something with that smile on her face that made his heart skip in his chest. She looked beautiful. More than beautiful. Would she really have lied to him? What if Juliet was right and all evidence was right there in front of him and he was being an asshole by not believing it? He closed his eyes and dragged his gaze away. She said she'd been working for Ben. Admitted it. So yeah, she could lie. She'd had three and a half months to tell him that and she hadn't. So what did that say about her? About the two of them? Him and her? Trust? _Nah_.

Besides, it had been three and a half months. A lot could change in that time. All these folks on the beach could have had acting classes or something.

At least Sharon was OK. And the baby. Unless that had all been a hoax too. The blood had looked like blood - well it had been red and wet, but then a lot of things had those bases covered without being blood. Though Sharon still looked real sick, pale and like she'd just lost a whole load of blood. And Helo said she was still bleeding. A twin, that's what Juliet had decided, a dead twin.

'We got company.' Helo's voice made him jump. He swung around to see Helo nodding over to the far corner of the beach where a ragged figure had just emerged from the cover of the trees. Sawyer squinted his eyes, watching as it darted through the sand, staggered, fell and dragged itself up before it continued haltingly to the edge of the main camp.

There was a shout and then another. A crowd started to form, muttering defensively as people stopped what they were doing and stepped up towards the newcomer. Sawyer didn't get a good look at who it was, but heard a hoarse voice, then the murmur of the group, the chattering sound of Rose as she moved into position as carer and protector. That meant whoever it was had to be friendly, right? Or not. Rose was the kind of person who'd give a stray _rat_ a drink and sit down in her shelter. Sawyer puffed out his cheeks, a feeling of _what NOW?_ smarting in his chest as he strode out to see what the hell was going on. Times like this he missed Jack. At least the guy was a cynical bastard when he wanted to be. Leaving it all up to Rose was a drive-by waiting to happen, and the last thing they needed was someone else getting hurt or killed.

A circle had formed and all he could see for a second or two was a glimpse of a battered, dirty figure collapsed on the sand. He jogged up to get a better look, pushing his way through the crowd to get to the front.

The boy was in rags, tiny cuts on him where he'd been snagged by the undergrowth, jeans ripped, a filthy once-white T shirt smeared with mud and flecks of blood. His eyes were crazy, terrified, his breathing coming in ragged gasps like he'd been running too far for too long. There was a confused murmur from the crowd. No one recognized him. But he did.

_Karl._

Sawyer elbowed his way out of the tight circle and knelt down, one steadying arm on the boy's shoulder. 'Karl? That you? You OK?'

The boy's eyes widened for a moment, then flooded with recognition and relief. 'They've got her!' he wrenched out, looking pleading up at him 'You gotta help.'

'Hey, calm down. It's OK.' He dragged the boy to his feet and supported him while someone - Rose probably - shoved a bottle of water in his face. The boy shook his head, refusing the drink. 'They've got Alex! They're gonna kill her!'

'_Alex?_ Wait, who's got Alex?'

'The soldiers.'

'_Sonofabitch_.' Sawyer glared up and over to where Starbuck and Apollo had already approached, a curious, wary expression on both their faces. The crowd parted silently, warily.

'What's he saying?' Apollo asked stiffly.

'Huh?'

'The boy. What's he saying? Translate.'

Sawyer stared at the two a moment before Karl turned to them, eyes widening when he registered the uniform. Sawyer was silent a beat, then sighed. 'He says that soldiers are going to kill Alex.'

'Alex?'

'His girlfriend.'

Sawyer watched as Apollo faced the boy. 'These soldiers, they look like me? Same uniform?'

The boy just stared, open mouthed, then backpedaled in terror.

'Guess that's your answer,' growled Sawyer, taking a small step towards the boy and blocking his view of Apollo. 'The soldiers, where are they? ' Sawyer grabbed him gently by the shoulder and gave it a little shake, shooting an angry look at Apollo before he got the boy's attention again.

'Uh. We were just by the dunes,' He pointed vaguely behind him, into the jungle. 'We were running away, I was gonna meet her, we were coming here, and-'

Sawyer leaned back a little. 'And don't tell me, Ben wanted her back.'

'I don't know!' The boy sobbed. 'Yeah, it had to be Ben, it- no, no, I heard them, they didn't know who she was, they only grabbed her when she said she was Ben's daughter and I followed them, but then they killed everyone and...'

'Ben - he the guy that was planning on killing me and the Chief when we first got here?' Apollo asked levelly, never taking his eyes off of Sawyer.

Sawyer hesitated a moment. 'Come on kid, we'll go find her. Which way they go?'

Karl shook his head, 'North, but I came here right here, I-'

'I can track them.' Kate stepped into the circle, already stuffing water bottles into a backpack, nodding once at Sawyer. She seemed right up for going with him – then he remembered that Kate had met Karl same time was he had, when they'd both been escaping from the smaller Island. Seemed like another lifetime now. There was something achingly familiar and solid about her, reliable. There was a familiar aching feeling in his chest, an old feeling he hadn't felt for months. He gave her a sort of small, half grimace of acknowledgement then frowned as she stiffened, looking past him, past his shoulder. He turned on reflex to see Juliet there, right behind him.

'Karl?' Juliet took a step toward the boy.

Sawyer frowned. Of course Juliet knew him as well. And a lot better than he and Kate did. He'd almost forgotten she was an _Other_. She must have known Karl for years.

'Juliet!' Karl took a step toward her. 'They're going to kill Alex!' he moaned.

'What?' The concern on her face was real enough, but Juliet had to know by now that if she ran with the wolves then someone was gonna get eaten.

'Looks like Ben is throwing his weight around with Alex.' he said curtly, 'and shooting a few people on the way.'

She gave him a terse look. 'I don't think it's Ben.'

'You defending Ben now?' He put his head to one side, taunting her, getting a rise out of her because hell, she still looked so damn gorgeous and he was damned if she was gonna look like that and rip his heart open without him giving her a fight.

She sighed and he saw her mentally counting to ten. 'Ben doesn't have any military-'

Apollo stepped forward. 'There's no time for this, we'd better get moving before the trail goes cold.'

'Hang on, _you _ain't coming.'

'Yeah. We are.' Apollo glanced over at Starbuck and she gave a quick nod of assent.

Sawyer groaned. He didn't need this. Really didn't need this.'No. You ain't.'

'Look, either these soldiers are Colonial or they're not. I'm guessing not. In which case we got the same problem.'

Sawyer hesitated a moment and then shrugged. _Whatever_. He couldn't stop them and a couple more guns would be better if they were going up against a bunch of killing machines. He turned to Kate, pointedly ignoring Juliet. 'You ready?'

'You still got that gun?'

He checked the back of his pants. Helo's gun was still there. He pulled it out and checked the chamber. He realized he didn't know a damn thing about the gun, didn't know how many rounds it held, had never actually shot with it. And no spare ammo. He glanced over to where Starbuck had a similar gun still strapped to her hip. Well, guess he'd have to watch and learn and use her stash of spare rounds.

They were out and moving within three minutes, Kate ahead, striding quickly through the camp with Karl close by her, then Apollo and Starbuck. Sawyer took up position at the rear where he could see them all. As he'd predicted, Sayid had opted to stay at the camp and Jin, well, Jin was a shadow at Sun's side and seemed completely unwilling to go on any group outings anymore. Sawyer had no idea what that was about and itwas the only thing anyone was doing that was out of character. But even that was in character because he was shadowing Sun and yeah, she'd been pregnant, right? Not that it was showing or anything, which it should have been by now, four months later and... aw hell.

Sawyer looked back uneasily. He didn't like leaving Juliet with Sayid, didn't like the way he was looking at her, that sneering little expression that said he'd be up to no good if anyone gave him the slightest excuse. He couldn't help grabbing Helo's arm as they headed out. 'Hey, you keep an eye on Juliet, OK?' Helo looked confused. Oh yeah, they hadn't explained the whole _Other _thing to him and Sharon, had they? Hadn't seemed much point. Now he kinda wished he'd given Helo a complete run down. 'Look, watch him, Sayid, OK?' Helo squinted over to where Sayid was still eying Juliet with something bordering on disdain. Sawyer had never liked the guy but now he felt like kicking his face in just to be sure.

And why the hell was he going with Karl anyway? Maybe because the boy looked so bad that he believed him. And it was straightforward. Go out, get the bad guys, save Alex, come back.

_Leave Juliet._

He caught her looking at him as he passed by. Her expression made him wince and turn away. He was hurting her. Big time. Being a complete asshole and doing exactly what he'd promised her would never happen. But that was before all this. Before he'd found out about Ben. He needed to think, get his head straightened out, but Alex and the soldiers weren't going to wait. And hell, yeah, OK he was a complete asshole and this was the worst way to leave it and Juliet's expression would rip his heart out if he let it get to him. But right now there wasn't time for all that.

He turned away, cursing under his breath, and trotted to catch up with the others.


	81. Sneak Peek

Chapter 81

Sneak Peek

It took them less than half an hour to reach the place. It was close - too close to the beach camp - nothing but a small clearing, a tiny strip of ground halfway up a slope. There was nothing to see, no signs of a scuffle, just some trampled grass that could have been made by anything. Karl desolately pointed north, up along the trail. 'They grabbed her and then took her that way.'

Kate squinted up to the top of the slope and then bent down to examine the grass at her feet. Her forehead was scrunched up in concentration, her T-shirt stuck to her skin with sweat, accentuating her contours, the curve of her hips, the way her breasts pushed up and out from between the straps of her backpack. Sawyer swallowed hard. She looked the same, everything was the same, even his goddamned reaction to her was the same. But people don't change so much in four months, so it didn't mean anything. Sawyer pulled his eyes away from her with an effort and focused on Karl. 'So, what happened?'

'They took her.'

Sawyer spun slowly on the spot, peering around and still seeing nothing. 'This is, what, ten, fifteen minutes walk from the beach camp? What were you doing here anyway?'

'Running away.' His voice was small and thin. 'I went after her - like you told me to - and then I hid near the compound so Ben wouldn't find me. Then this plane came over and blew the whole place apart and we ran...'

'Wait, this was, when? How long ago?'

'Right after we all got away.'

'Got away? From where?'

'Experiment Island.'

'You mean the smaller island? The one with the cages?'

'Yeah.'

'And this was when?'

Karl gave him a puzzled frown. 'You were there. I don't know, two days. I lost count, I-'

Sawyer froze. _Two days_. He stared hard at Karl, then glanced over at Kate. She was watching now, curious but impassive. She didn't react, didn't deny it. _Two days._

Time travel was irrational, right? Or at least believing in it was irrational. If this _was _a con it was the most sophisticated, bizarre Long Con he'd ever been involved with. But that was Ben's style, wasn't it? Wasn't this exactly what Ben would do? The sort of stunt he'd pull to prove himself better than anyone around him? The guy clearly had issues, wanted to be bigger and better and show everyone that he couldn't be beat. And they'd gotten away, him and Kate, so it would make sense for Ben to want to get his own back. And he liked his games. Hell, he'd fitted a false pacemaker inside of him, done that stunt with the bunny. Yeah, Ben sure liked it theatrical. It fit. But then that would mean that Karl was lying and every instinct inside of him was screaming that this kid was telling the truth. Karl was terrified. Traumatized. No way was he lying. No way. And Kate? She didn't seem like she was lying either. It didn't add up.

'... So, what, you were here when they snatched her?' Apollo's voice broke into his thoughts.

Sawyer's attention flicked back to Karl, and he watched as the boy took a deep breath and then answered the question. 'Yeah.'

'And why didn't they take you?'

'I was, um, using the bathroom.' he looked down morosely. 'And then I hid.' He stared at the dirt, unable to meet Apollo's gaze.

'Smart move, kid.' Sawyer cut in. 'You'd be no use to her if they took you too.'

'So then what, you came straight to the camp?' Apollo's voice was clipped, to the point.

'No. I followed them.'

'Which way?'

Karl pointed North and Kate immediately moved to the northern end of the tiny clearing. She stared intently at the dirt, scanning the ground. Sawyer stood behind her, flinching internally at the way his thoughts were running. He really didn't want to think about this right now, but he had to. Whoever had Alex, whatever was going on – hell, he had to figure it out. But now he was really confused. His mind kept tripping around on a loop of crazy logic and ending up batting back and forth with Juliet's words reverberating around in his head: _Time travel_.

Yeah. Right.

Like, a scientific impossibility.

Was he really beginning to believe it?

_Crazy, crazy crazy._

But it fit. Big time. With this, with Kate, with the way everything just... _was_. Exactly like it had been before. Like only a few hours had gone by. One look at Charlie could have told him that. The guy had looked like death, lying on that operating table. Blood everywhere. And the camp, Boomer was still sick, the position of all the shelters. Nothing out of place. It fit.

_Sonofabitch_.

So. _Time travel, huh? _

If he was really letting that one in, then what about Helo? What about freaking Picon? _Aw hell. _

'I got it.' Kate's voice made him jump. She was standing a little ways off, eyes glued to some subtle sign in the grass. 'This way.' She glanced over at him and gave him a sad half smile before turning away. He had no idea what that look meant. No idea at all. He sighed and fell into step behind them all, searching with his eyes for any of the clues that Kate was following. He could see squat, maybe a slight denting of the undergrowth at the far north of the clearing if he really used his imagination, but how Kate was finding the way with such forceful certainty was way beyond him. Unless of course she wasn't following a trail at all, but knew exactly where they were going because she was in on it and... and what? And Ben was at the end of this little trek and then he wouldn't have to play _Clue _anymore. That thought brought him a flush of relief. At least he wasn't scared anymore, meeting the guy at the end of all this would just about make his day.

They'd been going another ten minutes or so when they found them. Bodies. Three. All left where they fell. Not military - they were all dressed casually in jeans and shirts, a jumble of colors and shapes slumped close to each other. One thing they all had in common was that they'd all been killed neatly and cleanly, one with a bullet wound right smack in the middle of the head and the other two with their throats cut. Whoever had done this didn't mind getting up close and personal.

'The blood's fresh,' Kate said, staring down at the bodies. 'Still wet.' She looked up at him, her frown creased with worry. 'But it's not that far from the camp and we didn't hear any shots.'

Starbuck was standing over the body with the bullet hole. 'They used a silencer,' she said, dispassionately scanning the three bodies in front of her. 'They did a neat job.'

'So are they with you?' Kate's question made Starbuck blink a moment and then she shrugged.

'Hey. We don't know who they are or what they're doing here, and until we find out let's just keep the guesswork to a minimum.'

There was a tense pause. Kate pursed her lips and then looked away. 'They went North,' she said. 'That way,' she pointed ahead of her. 'Looks like they were dragging someone,'

'How many of them?'

She shook her head, 'Hard to tell; four, maybe five,'

A strangled sobbing noise made them all turn. Ah, they'd forgotten about Karl. The boy was crouched down, wrapped in on himself, arms around his head, shaking, the sobs squeezed out of him. He was obviously trying to be quiet. 'Karl, you OK?' Sawyer walked slowly up to him and bent down.

'Hey, hey Karl, it's OK. Hey, look at me!' Sawyer tried to prize the boy's arms away from his head, but all that happened was the boy began to wail, an eerie, almost animal sound. 'Hey Karl, Karl, c'mon. Look, we got three guns, whoever did this, we can get them, OK? You need to hold it together.' The eyes that looked up at him were laced with fear and pain. 'You knew these guys?'

Karl nodded.

'So they're Ben's people?'

Another nod.

'Right. So I'm guessing these are the guys Ben sent to get Alex back.'

'They just killed them all. It was so fast.' he was staring at the bodies now, his eyes half glazed with horror.

'Wait - you saw this? You saw them do it?'

He nodded. 'I was hiding. I followed when they took her and then-'

'How many?' Starbucks voice came, harsh and cold, from somewhere behind his left shoulder,

Karl looked up, his eyes wide.

'How many?' she repeated, her voice barely disguising her impatience.

'I don't know. I didn't see.'

'You said you saw what happened-'

'He didn't see _them_, dummy, didn't see the soldiers, just saw everyone getting shot. That right, kid?'

Karl stared fixedly into space, swallowed hard, his adam's apple bobbing through the murk and grime around his neck. Then he nodded. 'Yeah.'

'They weren't all shot.' Starbuck said practically.

'Hey, that's enough.' Kate stepped forward and bent down over him, blocking out Starbuck. 'Do you know where they've gone?' She said gently.

'They said they were looking for Ben,' Karl said.

'And Ben is where?'

'I don't know. Everyone was moving out. I didn't see where they went.'

Sawyer nodded. 'OK. Let's go. C'mon kid.' He put out a hand and Karl took it, quickly averting his eyes as he stepped past the bodies.

'I could have stopped them.' He said morosely.

'No. You couldn't have stopped them.' It was Apollo now. 'They were pros.' He saw Apollo exchange a look with Starbuck. She clenched her jaw. 'Let's go.'

Kate had no trouble following the trail. She strode ahead, only pausing here and there to touch an invisible mark on the ground, to look up, to look around, to sniff the air rather like a hound getting a scent. OK, so the sniffing thing was weird, and he figured out she was only getting her bearings, trying to judge wind direction, the position of the sun, where the ocean and the beach and the camp might be. Just was well one of them was on the ball because he was lost already. He gave an anxious glance behind him and caught up with her.

'They're in a hurry,' she muttered under her breath.

He looked down at the ground and saw nothing. 'So, what, you can tell?'

'They've made no effort to cover their tracks,' she explained. 'Probably because Alex isn't playing ball. See there? She was struggling.' Kate paused over a slight indentation in the dirt, then took several confident strides forward. He frowned at it, saw nothing there and then followed her. Suddenly Kate's arm went up, and Starbuck and Apollo both froze mid-stride. It took him and Karl another pace to follow suit but now all five of them were stationary, the only sound his breathing and the steady thumping of his own heart.

'_What the- ?_' he hissed.

'Look.'

He squinted ahead. He couldn't see a damn thing. Nothing but the usual low branches and greenery of the jungle floor. And then there it was, the thin dark shape of a wire.

'What the hell is that?'

'Trip wire.' Kate walked gingerly towards it, examining it carefully.

'So they left booby traps.' Starbuck's voice was flat and hard.

Kate shook her head and turned to Karl. 'Was Rousseau with you?'

'Huh?'

'Danielle, Danielle Rousseau.'

Sawyer could see by Karl's expression that he had no idea who she was talking about.

'Who's Rousseau?' Apollo asked.

'Alex's mother.'

Karl shook his head again. 'Alex doesn't have a mother.'

'Yeah she does.' Sawyer looked quickly over to Kate. 'You think she's tracking them?'

'Looks like it.'

'So this trap is for the armed unit, not for us.'

'Looks that way.'

'But they must have seen it.'

'Yeah.'

Sawyer followed the thin piece of wire. It was attached to a wooden pole snare and designed to flip out and swing a fairly large net of weights across. Not a death trap, just something designed to slow or disable.

'She's looking out for Alex,' he said staring at the wire. 'This one wasn't designed to kill anyone.'

Kate didn't say anything, but frowned and then stepped carefully over the wire. Sawyer followed, making sure that Karl didn't stumble. He looked back to see Starbuck stooping to examine the wire for a moment, an expression of something bordering on admiration on her face. He sighed and headed after Kate, unable to stop the nagging doubt that Starbuck and Apollo really were the good guys and that this wasn't in itself an elaborate trap. He shrugged off his unease and kept moving. First priority was to get Alex. Kate was moving more cautiously now. Damn, but Rousseau was slowing them down. Last thing they wanted was to get suckered into some home-made killer trap set by the crazy French woman.

'Who's Rousseua?' Apollo was at his shoulder, keeping his voice low.

'Alex's mother. She's some kinda weird crazy woman. Lives in the woods.'

'And these traps are hers?'

'Yeah.'

Apollo gave a curt nod and then carried on in silence, expertly scanning the jungle around them.

'You think your guys are the ones who got Alex?' Sawyer asked him, watching his reaction carefully.

'No.' Apollo's face was impassive, but the tell tale tick on the side of his jaw gave him away.

'Based on...?'

'Based on the fact that we don't kidnap civilians.'

'Oh, right, yeah. Forgot. You just shoot them.'

There was a three second pause and then Apollo looked away, biting his jaw hard. 'That shouldn't have happened,' he murmured, still facing away from him.

Sawyer shook his head. All he could see was Charlie lying on that operating table. A shudder went through him. If he and Juliet _had _somehow done some weird time thing, and come right back to where they'd left off, then that meant Charlie's survival wasn't certain, that he'd really been lying there dying and Jack really had been trying desperately to save him. That wasn't good.

They pushed on, down to a dark, shady stream where they all stopped to drink and wipe the sweat and grime from off of their necks and faces. Sawyer was stooping down to scoop some of the fresh water into his mouth when he heard it. A single shot. Just one, echoing through the trees. He froze, suddenly regretting standing exposed in the middle of the stream.

The sound of the shot faded and they all stood still. There was silence. A cold, eerie silence. Then he spun around, looking wildly at Kate. 'You think they got Rousseau?' he hissed.

Starbuck answered for her. 'No silencer. And that one didn't sound like a high caliber round.'

They moved ahead more quietly, scrambling up the slope of the stream as quietly as they could and settling back on the trail.

By the time they reached the scene there was a body on the floor and no sign of anyone. Starbuck knelt down and examined it. The guy was big, fit, kitted out in military uniform, full combat gear. No helmet though. He'd been shot in the head, lying down. There was a fancy looking rifle lying beside him. Sawyer could see the hilt of a knife strapped to his ankle. It was huge, vicious looking thing. The bullet had hit the guy in the side of the head. It looked a mess. Sawyer pushed down the queasy feeling welling up in his stomach and turned his head away.

Starbuck bent down and picked up the rifle, quickly checking it over. 'Sniper,' she smiled, and checked the chamber, efficiently unclipping the ammo belt from around the dead guy's waist and strapping it around her own. 'Well, looks like this Rousseau got them on the run,' she said practically. 'They didn't even stop to pick up this.' She held the gun easily in her hands.

Apollo stepped closer to her and examined the weapon. 'Doesn't look like one of ours. You think it's Cylon?'

Starbuck shrugged. 'Maybe.' She looked impassively down at the body. 'Nice shot.'

'Yeah. Looks like she's trying to pick them off one by one.' Apollo squinted out over at the trees and pointed up to higher ground. 'She chose a good spot.' Starbuck's eyes followed his and she nodded, then turned her attention back to the sniper rifle. It looked high tech, smooth, sleek, expensive. She sighted down the barrel and gave a whistle of approval. 'Nice.'

Kate was crouched down by a patch of damp earth. 'There are three,' said Kate definitively, as she checked the tracks, 'And they were dragging someone. See these marks here?'

Starbuck bent down to look while Sawyer looked uneasily around at the trees. He was growing more and more uncomfortable, couldn't shake the feeling that they were too exposed on this trail, anyone could take a shot at them - and seeing as they were with two uniformed military personnel, he was quite sure Rousseau would see them as legitimate targets

They moved on in silence, Kate moving swiftly through the trees, Starbuck close behind, new shiny rifle now looking very much a part of her. Who were these people, mercenaries? He felt a shiver of alarm. What if he wasn't with the good guys? What if Starbuck and Apollo were- aw hell, his head was hurting trying to figure it all out. No, simple facts, that's all he had; that Karl was here, that he said Alex had gone, that Rousseau seemed to agree on who was who because she hadn't taken a shot at them yet. That last thought was the most comforting he'd had all day. If he was going to trust anyone in this mess, it had to be the crazy French woman.

He glanced back the way they had come. They were moving quickly and fluently now. Karl was still sniffling a little, still staggering more than walking, but he was holding it together enough to stay with them. Apollo was right there on the other side of him, some tacit agreement to shield Karl with both their bodies. Starbuck seemed to be following Kate's tracking, watching the brush ahead of her while she concentrated on the trail on the ground. _The perfect team_. Yeah, right.

The sun was beginning to sink below the horizon and he could see by Kate's expression that their hopes of finding Alex were fading along with the light. They headed down to a stream and Kate paused, trying to find the trail again, scanning the opposite bank. 'You think they'll stop for the night?' he asked her, moving in close so that Apollo and Starbuck couldn't hear them.

Kate shrugged. 'With Rousseau onto them, I doubt it.' She looked down at the dirt. 'The light's pretty much gone. Unless we catch up with them soon, like in the next ten minutes, then that's it, we've lost them. And if it rains, then-'

They both looked up suddenly. There was a sharp sound, like a cry cut short and Kate's eyes widened. Sawyer opened his mouth to speak and she gestured him silent, her eyes snapping round to find Starbuck's. He turned in time to see Starbuck exchange some cryptic set of silent signals with Apollo before both of them melted easily into the undergrowth, disappearing swiftly in the dusk. Kate sank down onto her haunches and began to sneak slowly and silently in the direction of the sound, gesturing him to follow.

He'd slunk along for no more than five uncomfortable paces or so when another loud shot rang out, followed by a grunt, a gurgling sound and silence.


	82. Kith and Kin

Chapter 82

Kith and Kin

Sawyer instinctively ducked lower, creeping forward slowly until he was right behind Kate. He paused, then pushed himself even further into the dirt, making himself small and straining to hear anything.

'Come out with your hands up or she dies.' The voice made him jump and pull in an involuntary gasp. It was a male voice; harsh and cold. Kate had frozen in front of him and then slowly continued to creep forward. He wanted to grab her and haul her back, get her out of danger, but she was just out of reach. He satisfied himself by pulling the gun out of the back of his pants and crawling slowly after her. He didn't dare take off the safety, didn't dare do anything that might make any noise at all. He glanced back to check on Karl. The boy was crouched down, white and pinched, frozen to the spot. He gestured for him to stay put and then turned back to Kate, teeth gritted, moving as silently as possible, halting behind a stand of bushes when Kate sank down silently ahead of him, parting some branches to reveal a small clearing. He slunk in next to her and stared through the tiny gap.

One man dead on the ground - well, he looked dead, he wasn't moving - and two others, one of them holding Alex by her hair, a handgun pointed at her head, the other pointing a rifle into the trees ahead of them. Alex was twisted uncomfortably, a look of abject terror on her face. The guy who was holding her was staring into the trees ahead of him, no doubt where the shot come from, the other guy was panning around, looking for any movement in front or behind.

The guy holding Alex pushed her to her knees, still holding the gun to her head. Sawyer looked desperately around, he couldn't see the others. He had no idea where Apollo and Starbuck were. He had a bad feeling that this wasn't going to end well.

'Come out NOW. You have five seconds before she dies. One. Two. Three. Fouuuuuuurrrr. F-'

There was the slightest echo of movement and suddenly Danielle Rousseau stepped out from behind a tree, a rifle in her hands. There was a grunt of surprise from the guy holding Alex. 'Put the gun down, raise your hands above your head.' Sawyer watched as Rousseau slowly, almost reverently, put the rifle down on the dirt and then raised her arms above her head as she straightened up. Her expression was proud, defiant, and something about her made his throat ache. There was slight nod from the guy holding Alex. It was a quick, almost imperceptible signal, but the other guy raised the rifle and there was no time for Sawyer to do anything but suck in a breath as he heard the familiar sound of a sniper rifle. He watched in horror as Rousseau dropped down, then frowned as he saw her roll and grab back her gun. She wasn't hit. His mind was still computing this fact when he heard another shot and spun his eyes back to watch as Alex crumpled to the ground under the full weight of the guy who had been holding her. It took him another second to realize what had happened. Two shots and two men down. And Rousseau and Alex were alive.

Sawyer scrambled upright and stood up as Kate started running. Apollo strode into the clearing, yelling at a position to his right. 'What the frak? I didn't have time to cover you. You were supposed to wait for my signal!'

Starbuck emerged from behind a bush, still holding the sniper rifle. She dusted down her pants with one hand and shrugged, 'He'd have shot her. You were taking too long.'

Apollo's jaw clenched, but he gave one curt nod and bent down to examine the bodies. 'Clean shots. Well, done, Lieutenant.'

Starbuck flashed him a flirtatious grin.

Rousseau had gathered her rifle and was walking slowly towards them, stopping to stand in front of Alex. The woman's eyes were shining with tears. 'Alex, this is Danielle,' Kate said quietly. '... Your mother.'

00000

The world was spinning. Or he was. Or maybe it was just his mind, careening around inside his head making no sense of anything. _Chief, Galen, Sir, Tyrol, Petty Officer, Gallactica, his wife_ - he had a wife? Least he thought he had. And what was that about anyway? _Boomer. _

_Boomer. _

_Sharon._

He remembered a face, a smile, a rush of feeling. What the hell was happening? He was too hot, sweating. And he could hear voices, but he didn't dare open his eyes, it was all spinning around so bad and nothing was going to stay in his stomach if he even dared to look around, that much was certain. At least something was.

_Anders_. Another face drifted in front of him. Then a huge building - like a workshop - like a huge warehouse, smooth and white and full of bodies and work and how proud he'd felt that they'd done it, they'd succeeded, they'd made their own people, started their own family and now that- his stomach did another flip.

_Cylons._

Yeah. The gray walls of Galactica. _Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol._ Oh yesssss. _Sharon Valerii. Boomer._ What the hell happened to Boomer?

_Cylons._

_Number Eight._

_Adama_. Cylon attack. Escape and... Cylons. The plane. He knew that plane. Intimately. The Cylon plane. It had recognized him. No wonder. He'd built it. His head spun again at that thought, that realization. Not good. Not good at all.

Cylons were the enemy.

The enemy. He scrunched his eyes tighter. What was happening? What was this? He willed it to blackness, willed the thoughts away. Blank nothing.

Two seconds of nothing and then it began again.

_Saul Tigh. _

_XO. _

_Ellen._

Names. A lot of names. And numbers._ One, Two, Three, Four,_ faces flashing through his mind, all the people he'd helped create with love and dedication and devotion and... _Cylons_. The enemy. Destroyers of the human race. How the hell had it gone so wrong?

He shuddered as he felt his mind closing in again, a weird sort of darkness crushing in on him from the inside. And then pain; searing, blinding pain burning through his mind, this time giving way to a sharp image of some sort of space ship, and him and Sam and Saul all pouring over a map and discussing something. A bathtub, tubes protruding from it, one of the chrome Cylons, one of the Toasters, but no, it wasn't a Toaster, not to him, it was something else, something more. _Kin_.

_Kith and Kin._

_Boomer. Ellen. Number One. _Ellen's idea. Ellen's irritating whine. Ellen's insistence.

And his own wife. _Tori_. Oh god he _was _married. And she had... had she? Had she really? Was she like that? A wave of feeling crashed over him, bitterness, loss, love, hate, another series of images thundering through him.

He was going to die from this. Really die.

Darkness.

When he awoke again there was a moon. He glanced over to one side. It was dark, but the place was bathed in moonlight. It was silent except for waves washing up and down. He was hungry, thirsty. He shifted uncomfortably.

'Hey.' a voice. Female. A hand on his arm. 'There's water here.' The feel of a bottle on his lips and the hand now behind his head, gently supporting him so that he could raise his head enough to drink. 'You've been out of it for a while. How are you feeling?' He groaned and put a hand to his head, uselessly feeling for a wound. His hand slapped the air and then fell back down. 'My name's Juliet,' the voice continued smoothly.

'What happened?' he managed, his voice cracked and hoarse.

'It looks like you had some sort of fit.'

He winced.

'Do you have any history of epilepsy or seizures?'

He ignored her and concentrated hard on trying to remember. He'd been on the beach, and before that there'd been a long walk in the dark, that's right, he'd been escaping with Apollo and the Doc. His head had hurt. And then Starbuck had shot that guy and then they'd come here, to the beach camp.

He let his head drop back and almost moaned with the pain. It was all coming back to him now. All of it. The plane - the Cylon Raider. It had recognized him, beamed some sort of signal at him, he'd felt it, that burning feeling. He remembered the plane, hovering there in front of him, the red light moving back and forth. What the - he gasped as the memories came back. The Raider on the beach, Gallactica, and before that, his work with the Cylons, and before that...

'You OK?' The female voice again.

He kept his eyes shut but nodded. He didn't want to open them. He was seeing too much already. 'Where are we?'

She hesitated. 'Earth,' she said. There something definite and determined in her voice.

'_Earth_.' he let the word out on a whisper. 'That's good.' Then he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep again. He couldn't deal with it now, he felt so tired, so drained. And his head hurt. _Sleep_. With any luck he wouldn't wake up again.

00000

The silence stretched out. The light was fading. They'd dragged Alex to her feet and managed to step back in time for Karl to engulf her in a tearful, snot-filled embrace. Sawyer watched as Danielle drank in the sight of the girl with rapt attention, then she took a step away from them all and gave a longing last look before she turned to leave. Alex must have been surreptitiously watching her as well because she gave a cry and pulled herself away from Karl's arms. 'Wait!'

Rousseau paused, her back to the girl, stiff and solid.

'Wait... you-' a deep breath. 'I don't have a mother, I-'

Rousseau turned slowly and looked at her. 'You were taken from me when you were a baby. Stolen.'

Alex was staring, frantically peering into the woman's face. 'Stolen? I-' She took a deep breath. 'They said I didn't have a mother - that she was dead.'

Rousseau gave a humorless snort. 'And yet I stand here.'

'But my father-'

'Benjamin Linus is not your father.'

There was a shocked pause. 'Not my father?' Alex breathed the words in an aching whisper.

'No. Benjamin Linus took you from me. Your real father was called Robert.'

'Is he here?' Alex looked around, staring into the undergrowth surrounding them as if Robert was going to miraculously appear.

'No.' A pause. 'He's dead.'

Sawyer could see Alex beginning to panic. 'How do I know you're telling the truth?'

Rousseau stiffened 'Why should I lie to you?' She frowned and then took another step back, turning to go.

'Wait!' Alex took a step toward her, 'It's just...' she shook her head and swallowed, 'A lot to take in. Please.'

'I hate to break up this touching reunion, but the light's going. Maybe we should head back to the camp.' Starbuck. Ever practical. Though in this case Sawyer agreed with her. He watched as she bent down and started stripping the bodies of weapons and ammunitions, her interest in Alex and Rousseau gone.

'You should go back by the beach. It's safer.' Rousseau said.

Apollo nodded, his eyes flitting from Alex and Karl back to Rousseau. There was an awkward silence broken only by the sounds of Starbuck turning the bodies over and pulling anything useful off of them with jerky, rough movements.

'There might be more of them,' Apollo said quietly, almost apologetically. 'We should really get away from here.'

Sawyer took a deep breath and pulled his attention away from Rousseau and Alex, focussing instead on the bodies in front of them. He didn't like dead people. Never had. There was something about the way the life was just... gone that he hated. Reminded him too much of his childhood, he guessed. The way his dad had laid there after he'd shot himself, the way his mother hadn't moved, the way they'd both looked the same seconds after they'd died - except that the life had gone. He took a deep breath, forcing that image out of his head, looking away from the corpses and turning instead to Apollo. 'So who were they?'

Apollo was studying the bodies impassively. 'Not Colonial,' he said definitively.

'Okay. So...' Sawyer swung around to where Alex was still standing looking shaken. 'You know these guys?'

She shook her head. 'They wanted Dad,' she said in a small voice. '_Ben,_' she corrected quickly.

'You seen them before?'

She shook her head again. 'No. Never.'

'They're not from the Island then?'

Rousseau stepped forward. 'They came last night - in a helicopter.' Rousseau pointed over to the West. 'From over there.'

'And how'd you know that?'

She shrugged.

'Are there more of them?'

'I don't know.'

Starbuck stood up, shouldering a second sniper rifle. 'Well, either way, we should get out of here.'

The light was fading fast as they set out, there was still some light in the sky but the sun was down and the shadows on the ground were pitch black. Sawyer stepped quickly around the bodies, glad they were already shrouded in shadow. The darkness was creeping him out- not that he wasn't used to the dark, he'd spent nearly four months in the semi-gloom of that hatch… um _spaceship_. Or whatever shit it had been. But this was different. He couldn't shake the feeling that something or someone could easily be watching, sniper rifle in hand, and he wouldn't know anything about it until a shot was planted neatly between his eyes. He shivered and glanced over at Kate. She was walking quietly behind Rousseau and Alex, Karl stumbling along behind. She hadn't said much, hadn't said anything since they'd broken cover and found those military guys dead. He caught up with her in a couple of longer strides. 'You OK?' he asked softly, falling into step beside her.

She sighed. 'Just tired I guess.'

'It's getting dark fast,' he said, glancing around nervously, trying to pick out shapes from the shadows.

She looked up at the sky and nodded, then lowered her voice. 'Who do you think they are?' she asked quietly.

'Who? The dead guys or out little armed escort?'

She gave a soft, huffing laugh. 'All of them.'

He swivelled round to check on Apollo and Starbuck. They were walking together behind them. This time he didn't give a damn. Starbuck could have killed him fifty times over by now if she was going to. Looked like maybe she wasn't one of the bad guys after all. He turned back to Kate and shrugged. 'Damned if I know. But looks like those two are on our side. For the moment.'

She seemed about as satisfied as he was with that answer, but she didn't say any more, instead setting her face to the front and pushing on to keep up with Rousseau and Alex.

He figured that Rousseau was taking them due East - the shortest route to the sea - so that when they finally hit the beach it had to have been a fair ways north of their camp. But however far off course she was leading them, it was still a relief to finally step out of the oppressive dark of the jungle. The sea shimmered in moonlight, and the splashing of the waves was kind of comforting. Plus no one was going to approach from the sea without being seen, so that was one whole half of his line of sight covered. Only problem was they weren't in any cover and made themselves into perfect targets as they strolled along with the horizon outlining their silhouettes. Maybe not such a good idea after all. But Rousseau looked determined and the old French bird kept right on, picking up the pace even more, forcing him to lengthen his stride to keep up. Suddenly he was thankful for that ridiculous daily run around the hanger deck. Helo had been right. No good losing fitness in space.


	83. Adrift

Chapter 83

Adrift

Darkness. Waves. Cold. Nausea. At least if it rained the life capsule had a roof. Penny sat huddled to one side of the thin plastic wall, shivering from the cold. She was soaked to the bone, her whole body shaking from a combination of cold, exhaustion and fear. She'd known there'd be risks, known that coming here would probably be dangerous, but she hadn't expected to be attacked before they'd even had a chance to make it to the Island. That plane had come out of nowhere and within about thirty seconds of appearing had blown the ship to smithereens. She had no idea what had happened to the other members of the ship's crew. No idea even how she'd made it into the raft, beyond the fact that the captain had hauled her across the deck and shoved her in, launched the thing and then stepped back, leaving her to watch in horror as the rest of the ship went up in flames.

Daniel stirred a little beside her. They were huddled together for warmth, her arms around him, both of them shaking miserably. He felt so thin, so slight. But then he'd always been skinny, ever since she'd known him. She almost laughed at herself. God, here they were in the middle of the ocean, their ship probably sunk, and she was bitching about whether or not Eloise was feeding him enough? Her laughter almost turned to tears. They were lost. Probably a long way out to sea by now. When the sun came up they'd no doubt find themselves surrounded by water with no land, no food, no clean water and only an unpleasant, painful, long drawn out death ahead of them. It would be too soon for Eloise to miss them - unless someone had got a message out when the plane hit them. But even if they had, the little life raft could be miles away by now, dragged away by unseen currents, nothing more than a tiny speck in a huge ocean.

It was dark. She was no wuss but she'd never liked the dark. Or the cold. The only sounds were the tiny noises as the waves slapped against the sides of the raft. Daniel shifted a little in his sleep. How he'd managed to fall asleep was beyond her. She was too thirsty and scared and cold. And it was too dark now. At first she'd tried paddling with her hands, but the current had been too strong and had just swept them further out to sea. And then it had got dark and there'd been no point in exhausting herself even though it made her feel better to do something, to move, to at least try and keep warm, but then she couldn't see where they were. She briefly considered doing some more paddling anyway, but the wet and the dark put her off and besides, she was too tired now anyway.

This hadn't exactly been part of the plan. She'd agreed with Eloise that she take Daniel to the Island, not Eloise - and not because Richard Alpert had come and talked to her personally, but because it made more sense, because she was younger and fitter and because Daniel was her brother and she cared about him too. And OK, yes, also because of Desmond and the things that Richard Alpert had said. Though Penny hadn't told Eloise about Richard Alpert's little visit. She still didn't trust her - well, she trusted her with Daniel and his well being. Sort of. But nothing else. No, she trusted the information, the tiny sheet of laminated paper carefully stuffed in her pocket. She trusted the information there, but then that was Daniel's, not Eloise's. Eloise was a sham and they both knew it.

She wanted Daniel back. Not that she'd ever known him as anything but deranged and crazy, but even so, she imagined what he could have been, what he should have been, if Eloise hadn't been so intent on saving him that she'd wrecked his mind and his life in the process. Penny understood now, had come to see it all more clearly, especially over the last couple of months when they'd been preparing for this in earnest. Eloise had spoken more about the mechanism of what had happened, and Penny had tried to understand it and take it all in, even though most of it was beyond her. She had dutifully poured over Daniel's books with Eloise, listened endlessly to bizarre and incomprehensible explanations of EM waves, time travel, space travel, energy surges and deep space, stared at odd looking formulae that made absolutely no sense to her at all and come to the conclusion that although Eloise had a passing understanding of maths and wave theory, the woman had only the barest understanding of what they were actually dealing with. The only one with any clue was Daniel, and any help he could offer was shut tight in a mind that had been warped and bent into insanity.

She lay back against the wall of the life raft, checking to make sure she still had the waterproof copy of Daniel's journal strapped to her own body. According to Eloise, once they got to the Island Daniel's mind should heal and with his journal he'd have the information he needed to fix everything. At least that was what Eloise seemed to think was going to happen. Penny really had no idea. Beyond looking for Desmond and trying to help her brother she had no clue what she was doing there.

Now it looked as is if was all ending in disaster anyway. They'd spent months preparing, been an hour away from successfully landing on the beach and making contact with the crash survivors on the Island and then that plane had come out of nowhere. She wondered if it had been sent by her father. Probably. He and Eloise had stopped communicating somewhere between the planning and implementation of Eloise's little plan, and her father had made it quite clear that he didn't approve of any attempt to go near the Island. She was sure he was unaware that his two children had been on that ship. She certainly hadn't told him she was going, afraid he would take steps to stop her. And he would have. He'd have found a way. He always did.

She leant back on the walls of the life raft and squeezed her eyes shut. It looked like therewas good chance that her own father would be the one responsible for her death, which was ironic, really. In a sort of tragic, pitiful sort of a way. Sort of summed up their awkward, dysfunctional relationship which had always been dominated by his twisted, almost maniacal drive for power.

In an ideal world she'd have had time to radio him when that plane came over, got him call it off. But it had happened so fast. One moment blue sky the next explosions, flames, being shoved in the life raft and set adrift. The captain should have let them stay on the ship, at least then it would have been fast and relatively painless. This way they got to die slowly of dehydration and exposure. The upside was that it only took, what, two days without water before the body started to shut down?

She sighed and curled closer to Daniel, thankful that he was still asleep. He'd panicked at first, not had a clue what was going on and she'd spent hours trying to calm him down. She wasn't looking forward to what was going to happen when he woke up again. The Island was supposed to heal him, supposed to sort out whatever had gone wrong in his head. But now they were probably nowhere near the Island, and when he woke up and saw the sea all around them and no sign of land at all, he'd panic and she wouldn't be able to explain to him that they had no food, no water, that they would probably die out there unless someone spotted them. She should never have agreed to this, never agreed to bring him. According to Eloise they were supposed to land safely on the island, Daniel's mind was supposed to recover and then he would go back in time and be shot by a younger Eloise. Any deviation would be a good thing, she was supposed to watch for them. Ironic if the big deviation was Daniel dying before he even reached the Island. Some success that would be.

She sat for a while, her back chafing against the cold rubber of the raft. Daniel was breathing heavily. She instinctively curled closer to him for warmth. The waves and the motion of the raft were at least steady and soft. She shivered again and tried to calm the panic. It was a long time before she finally allowed exhaustion and fear to give way to an uneasy and restless sleep.

00000

Sawyer squinted into the darkness. Rousseau was still striding along the beach, the rest of them following in a little gaggle after her. All he could see was the dark smudge of her silhouette, the sharp stick-shape of her rifle poking up over her right shoulder. Her easy gait made her head bob gently as she strode along the edge of the water line where the sand was firmest. The rest of them were silent, had been for a while. They must have been walking a good hour already, and even though Rousseau was taking them the long way round, it couldn't be that far to their camp now - another hour or so tops. Sawyer took a deep breath, revelling in the taste and smell of the cool air. He'd kind of gotten used to the darkness, the waves, the wash of the cooler air on his face, the feeling of the vastness of the sky above him. He'd missed this, really missed it. The ceiling of that hatch - _goddmmmit_, spaceship - had been too low, the walls always closing in on him. Not like this. Now the sense of space and the hugeness of the sky were almost exhilarating. Added to the fact that so far no one had tried to shoot at them, which was even better.

'Hey,' he turned behind him to Starbuck, dropping back so that he was walking beside her, Apollo on her other side. God only knew why he always picked Starbuck because talking to Apollo would have been safer. He knew her, he guessed. Somehow he just _got _her, got where she was coming from. Whatever crazy place she was coming from. Starbuck gave him the requisite glare that told him he had her attention and he pushed on. 'What planet are we on?' he asked.

'What?'

He sensed rather than saw her frown. And OK, it was a weird question, but he needed to know. Needed to know if she was on the same page as Helo, if something was consistent, if Juliet was right, if any of this hung together. 'What planet do you think this is?' he repeated amiably, leaning over a little to check if Apollo was on board as well. Of course he was. That guy didn't miss much.

Starbuck's eyes immediately narrowed in suspicion. 'We've been over this.'

He gave her a friendly grin, no doubt lost in the darkness, but hoped it would show in his voice. 'Yeah, well, humor me. Go over it again.'

'Okay. Kobol. I think this is Kobol.'

'The _planet _Kobol?'

'Is there a point to this?'

'You ever heard of Picon?'

'You think this is Picon?' She looked around her appraisingly, her silhouette suddenly bathed in moonlight as the clouds scudded over the moon. He couldn't help a crazy, drunken sort of grin followed by a rush of warmth toward Juliet. She was so smart. How the hell had she worked it out so fast? 'So if you're the expert, where are we?' Starbuck asked.

He smiled at her and hesitated. Was he really going to do this? Yeah, he was. His smile widened. 'Earth,' he said firmly.

Her face registered shocked surprise and then closed in, suspicion creasing her forehead in a frown, deepening the shadows on her face. 'Right. And you get to that, how?'

'Where are you from?' He asked her, enjoying all of this in spite of himself. Hell, he'd been tormented for months by Helo and freaking Picon. Nice to get some comeback.

She almost growled at him. 'Like I said, I'm from all over. Military brat.'

'Caprica?'

'Yeah, kinda. You?'

'Like I said, I'm from here. Earth.'

Starbuck shook her head and smiled a dangerous smile. 'That's not what you said before.'

'You never asked me what _planet _before. Ask any of us, ask Kate. They'll all tell you the same.'

A tight pause and Starbuck's smile was still there, though no it had taken on more than a hint of menace. 'So you're all Cylons?'

'How did you get to that? No, we're all... _Earthlings_.' Jeez this was fun.

She gave him a look and then shook her head, the half smile still plastered on her face. 'Don't mess with me,' she said evenly.

He took a deep breath, ready to say something else to set her off, but was silenced by a gesture from Rousseau ahead. Probably just as well. Baiting Starbuck wasn't a smart game. But he'd found out what he'd wanted to know. Now the question was simply whether or not he could bring himself to believe it. _Time travel, space travel, space ships, Picon._

No way.

He took a deep breath and brushed away the hair hanging over his face.

_No way._

'Your camp is up there,' Rousseau said quietly. Sawyer squinted ahead. No lights, nothing. It was completely dark now. He could feel the wind picking up and the smell of rain.

'You're not coming with us?' Kate's voice directed at Rousseau.

'No. I'll return in the morning.'

Sawyer started walking. He wanted to find Juliet, Helo, Sharon. He needed to talk.

He was going to have to grovel on his knees when he saw Juliet again. He'd really messed things up between them. He couldn't believe she was right about the whole time travel - space travel _Picon_ thing. But then he'd always known she was smart. Real smart. Not just book smart, but smart enough to figure out what was going on even before he had. And he wasn't exactly stupid. And OK, so he'd messed up, but at least he didn't have to fight her anymore. He hating fighting with her.

But Ben... he still had no idea where Ben fitted into this whole thing. She'd been sent by Ben - what, four months ago? Sent by Ben, ended up on the spaceship hatch, gotten together with him, put the whole Ben thing behind her and then when she got back to the Island... what, had she picked right up with Ben's program? Which she hadn't told him about, and then gotten right back to work being his stooge.

It sucked. He pushed aside the grizzle of irritation and disappointment. If Juliet had really been on the level, she'd have told him. Though she had said something about trying to kill Ben when they'd first landed on Galactica - before the hatch thing. And what the hell had that been all about anyway? There was too much to think about. He took a deep breath and tried to focus his thoughts. _Juliet_. Right. Working for Ben. Or not. She said she'd tried to kill him and that Ben was probably after her. At the time they'd both assumed that the place was bugged and both of them had made some sort of unspoken agreement not to talk about her stuff too much in case it put her in danger. In case Ben heard and got all shitty about it. Now he could see how that worked for her. Like, _really_ worked for her. Like now, when he had no clue about her real relationship with Ben, like whether or not the space thing was real. He glanced over to Starbuck and Apollo. They didn't look like aliens from outer space, and their weapons weren't exactly high tech, their space ships looked just like the hatch they'd found here, kitted out like something out of the 1970's. Oh, and they spoke perfect English. So, what, they had some translation chip in their heads or... he shook his head, smiling at himself.

He had to be the worst sucker on the planet.

But then there was Kate. And Hurley. And Desmond. And the rest of the survivors. And they weren't lying. Maybe he hadn't been to some spaceship in the sky, maybe that part was all Ben's little joke. But the time travel part, that part was real. Unless he'd been drugged, unless the last four months had been a dream. Maybe he'd been in that little room where Ben had tried to brainwash Karl. Maybe they'd drugged him and put some sort of suggestion into his mind so that he only imagined that he'd been with Juliet, that they'd really seen Picon and... and hell, his brain was hurting again from trying to figure it all out.

By the time they reached the camp he was the first to admit that he had no idea which way was up, no idea what or who to believe. Beyond the fact that Kate wasn't lying to him. That was something he was going to hold onto. And that Juliet was nowhere to be seen. The camp was deserted; no fire, no lights, no nothing.

'Looks like they took my blackout advice seriously,' Starbuck commented dryly, trudging up through the remains of the camp. 'Guess they're all in the bushes up there.' She nodded to the little rise of sand dunes.

Oh yeah, the crazy plane. That was supposed to have happened a few hours earlier, right? So now everyone was sleeping in the bushes and keeping a lid on the lights. Sawyer looked around, squinting through the hazy darkness as clouds conveniently chose that moment to roll overhead and shadow by the moon. 'Didn't Boomer say it had perfect night vision?'

'Well, being a Cylon I guess you'd know.'

'Hey, if you really believed I was a Cylon you'd have shot me by now.'

He sensed, rather than saw her watching him in the darkness. 'Maybe. But Boomer and Sharon are still alive, so don't count on it.'

He grunted and then stumbled forward, losing his footing in the dark. Damn. He'd tripped over something. He squinted down. Driftwood, and lots of it - well, it wasn't wood, it was metal.

'Must be from that ship. Looks like it went down.'

Ship. Right. The one that got zapped by the plane. _Sonofabitch_. Trying to keep track of two timelines was giving him a headache.


	84. Dawn

Chapter 84

Dawn

Day 8

Early morning light splashed a faint streak of color across the low horizon, bathing The Chief's face in light. It took him a while to figure out what it was. He could just see the edge of the rising sun if he turned his head slightly and squinted through the leaves. It was morning. Dawn. A real dawn, not the fake brightness of the artificial lights on Galactica. No, this was the real thing.

It was morning and his mind was frighteningly, disturbingly clear.

He understood now.

_Cavil_.

It had to have been.

His memory was still a little hazy - the last thing he remembered was checking the tanks with Sam. They'd found poison in the Sevens' tanks and the Daniels were dead. Every single one of them. Murdered. Ellen was in pieces and prime suspect Cavil was nowhere to be seen. The memory was suddenly very clear: the feelings of horror and disappointment, endless talks with Ellen, disbelief, rage when his own suspicions appeared to have been confirmed by Cavil's timely disappearance, frustration at Saul Tigh for not reigning in his stupid, neurotic wife. Irritation at Tory for being a hard-hearted bitch about it - and then his own usual, predictable response to that, escape to the bottle Sam offered him in one of the storage rooms. And finally that walk around the other tanks to make sure that they hadn't been tampered with as well. Then nothing until... well, he had another whole set of memories overlaying those first ones - presumably planted by Cavil - of his life before Galactica, a life with no knowledge of Sam and the others, of who they were, of who _he _was, no knowledge of anything Cylon beyond the fact that they were the enemy and he was supposed to fight and fear them.

He delved back into his early memories. Vague impressions of growing up in the colonies, a school, a home, some lightly sketched friendships that felt false and blurry in his mind. Now that he had his 'real' memories to compare them to, he could see how insubstantial and unsatisfying these were. Gray, hazy impressions that were little more than a string of half formed images in his mind. He vaguely remembered a few stray scenes from a strange, uneven childhood - but then Cavil had never been blessed with a balanced or perceptive emotional life, so no wonder that his attempt to manufacture one for someone else had been laughable.

It had been enough though. It had fooled him, had never led him to suspect that the wooden memory figures of his parents and his early life had never been real. Looking back, it should have been obvious. The clear, sharp memories of his training in the military, his time on Galactica, real memories contrasting sharply with his early childhood. But then early memories faded for many people and the fact that his were hazy and only half remembered wasn't anything special. There was no way he could have suspected. Cavil's planted memories might have been amateurish but they were effective. Cavil's plan had worked.

He scanned his mind again, running through the false memories, then the real ones of Galactica and... Boomer's face flashed into his mind. _Boomer_... he felt his heart stutter. Boomer? An Eight, but-

He lay back and dry scrubbed his eyes. This was going to take a while to unravel. He could already see Tory's sneer of disapproval. She'd always said he was too involved in his own creations. As if she hadn't been. As if any of them hadn't. They'd all been too involved, all thrown too much of their own selves into the project - the good and the bad. All of them had been far too involved to see the bigger picture and figure out what was really going on.

He sighed and pushed himself gingerly onto one elbow, wincing as the pain in his head returned. Not as bad as last night, but there was still a dull, insistent ache that made his eyes hurt. No, it felt like his whole _brain _hurt. He groaned and lay back down, one arm over his face, willing himself to drift back to sleep. He didn't want to deal with all of this, didn't want to have his face pushed into the mess that Cavil had created, god, he didn't want to stand in front of Apollo or Starbuck - or even Boomer - and fess up to what had really happened. Even just thinking about it churned the rising feeling of nausea and shame that was threatening to rise up and come blasting out of his mouth.

In the end it was terrifyingly simple. However it went down, whatever he thought or felt or had intended, the only relevant, inescapable fact was that the Cylons had nuked all twelve colonies and almost completely destroyed the human race.

_His _Cylons. The ones he'd made.

Shame and nausea didn't do it justice. There was just no wriggle room on this one, nowhere to hide now that his mind had somehow burst out of whatever memory blocks and tampering Cavil had put there. Ignorance hadn't exactly been bliss - not with the war and the Colonies' equivalent of armageddon - though in his case it had certainly helped. But he couldn't hide anymore. Now he knew and he couldn't just lie there, he had to get up and... and what? What could he do? It was all done. End game pretty much over. Cavil had it all sewn up. The fact that Boomer had been on board Galactica at all was significant. Cavil had schemed and plotted well enough to have made sure even the escaping fleet of fleeing humans had Cylon agents right there in the middle of it all. He wondered how much Boomer even knew. And how many other Cylons were hiding in the rest of the fleet, quietly destroying it from the inside.

All those little acts of sabotage had been her, of course - the water tanks exploding, letting in the suicide bomber - he stopped suddenly and huffed out a breath. But Boomer had been the one to find that water, and she'd nuked the Basestar over Kobol. It didn't fit. She hadn't exactly been very effective or efficient. He knew what Boomer was capable of, what all the Cylons could do physically. She could have crippled that ship if she'd really wanted to. Any of them could have. So why hadn't she? Why hadn't Boomer taken down Galactica?

Maybe Cavil had held her back because he hadn't finished playing with them, wanting to draw out the last few gasps of humanity. Maybe nuking the colonies had been too easy and Cavil hadn't finished getting off on the pain and destruction he had caused. That would certainly fit.

Either way he had to warn them, he had to say something, do something. It was probably too late, but even so, he had to find Apollo, get back to Galactica, warn them, _something._

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, trying to sit up enough to see around him, squinting in the unexpected shafts of bright, low sun that greeted his eyes when he tried to look around. He was in a tiny, hastily constructed shelter. He vaguely remembered being moved the night before - arms under him, that same woman's voice coaxing and encouraging him to take a few halting steps. Then being put down on the ground, the relief of being able to lie down and fade out again. He was lying under a bush, a tarpaulin roughly thrown over it as protection from the weather. The thing was still soaking wet - had it rained in the night? Around him he could see nothing but greenery, but there were voices, quiet, hushed, just waking voices murmuring all around him. He heard a laugh, stifled quickly, the rustle of clothes and of people stretching and getting ready for the day. It all sounded so safe and normal, the sleepy voices relaxed. The sounds were comforting, soothing, stilling his mind and pushing him back down, down, something closing and changing and-

He lay back again and closed his eyes, trying to remember where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. He'd get up and then... planes, he was supposed to keep the planes flying. He was the Chief, he was in charge of... no, wait, they weren't on Galactica. He'd gotten into that Raptor with Apollo, going to gods knew where and then the thing had crashed. Right. They'd been looking for Starbuck and Boomer and... his eyes snapped open again. Dawn. It was morning. There was something he had to do, but like the faint image of a dream it had gone.

It took him a couple of long, slow seconds to adjust to being upright. The sun was low over the horizon, the dawn light still hazy and subdued. Even so it felt like a spotlight blaring into his eyes. He took a deep breath and looked around, searching with intent this time. He took a few paces away from his little bush, noticing already the tiny trails where the undergrowth had been forced flat with the beginnings of little paths through the thick vegetation. This camp was new then, he thought automatically. He wandered a few paces down the nearest path, passing two more shelters, people inside them that he didn't recognize. They were civilians, refugees.

From the war.

This time the memories slammed into him with the force of a Heavy Raider. The war. The Cylons. The rest of them; Tory and Sam, Saul, and... he almost cried out at the agony of it, like it was tearing his mind to shreds, leaving him gasping and sweating, having to take gulps of air to stop himself from screaming in pain. Squeezing his eyes shut helped. A little. Gave him enough time to sort and sift through the memories, sorting them again, feeling them all.

Another wave of shame that ground into nausea and made him think for a moment he was going to throw up. He shuffled to his feet, stumbled and caught himself on the edge of a tree. Another deep breath and he kept walking. _Check on Boomer._ _Then find Apollo. One thing at a time. _

She was in a spot near the beach, shoved awkwardly under a low hanging tree. Its roots were twisted around to form a sort of curved den - the kind he'd have loved to have played in as a kid. In whatever version of his memories he was accessing. She lay, still in her in her uniform, her eyes closed. She was sleeping. Her face looked pale, the huge bandage, blood stained, taking up half the side of one cheek. He knelt next to her and gently brushed his fingers across her forehead. She didn't stir. He remembered now. He remembered it all. She'd tried to shoot herself. The last time he'd seen her she'd said something about... about not trusting what she'd do. God, she wasn't designed for this. He hadn't made her for this, not some sort of twisted secret weapon. He'd made her for love and joy and beauty and gentleness and... a wave of rage made him withdraw his hand and clench it into a fist.

_Cavil_.

Cavil had done this to her, messed with her head, abused her, screwed her over to the point where she'd tried to destroy herself.

He stayed on his knees next to her, head bowed. He could hear the gentle, even sounds of her breathing. As he raised his eyes to look at her he shook his head, hardly believing the complete mess that he'd woken into. She was a Cylon. Probably something like a walking bomb. And maybe he was too. For all he knew Cavil had screwed with him in just the same way. The memory blocks Cavil had created had been strong enough to hold in place for years - for all he knew Cavil had done more, made him into a monster as well. There was a good chance that he'd joined Sharon in her little acts of sabotage. Maybe it had been him, not her. Maybe he'd been the one destroying Galactica from the inside. How the hell had they all let this happen? They should have confronted Cavil before this, ignored Ellen Tigh's ridiculous pleas for leniency and understanding. It had been a very, very foolish mistake. And one that had cost the human race nearly everything.

He bent his head, wanting the ground to somehow eat him, hide him, take it all away. They'd tried to help, tried to give the Cylons something more. They'd wanted to build a civilization, a happy, healthy peaceful civilization, but all that had happened was that they had ended up playing god and unwittingly wreaked such cataclysmic devastation that it would have been better if they hadn't gotten involved at all. And now here he was, the last remnant of the human race still pursued and hounded by his Cylon children.

The fleet was riddled with Cylon plants like Boomer. Even Saul Tigh was the XO for crying out loud. What did that say about Cavil's skill and planning? He'd always been cunning. Crazy, mean, neurotic and cunning. They should have scrapped that model and started again, right from the start, when they realized the sort of creature Ellen had made.

He raised his head slowly and looked at the makeshift camp around him. This was a refugee camp. And that Cylon plane knew about them. It wouldn't be long before more Cylons were here in force, all programmed to forget who they were, all programmed for one thing: to kill.


	85. Morning

Chapter 85

Morning

Juliet had to be avoiding him. Painfully, hurtfully avoiding him. Either she was going out of her way to make sure they didn't see each other, or, yeah, he wasn't the center of her world and she had other things to do. Things that had nothing to do with him. He couldn't figure which was worse, being purposefully ignored or realizing that he was irrelevant. And how come she was suddenly so busy anyway? OK, so she was a doctor and Sharon had been bleeding half to death, and then there was Charlie and... and he wasn't used to it, was all. He'd been wrapped around her and her world for the last four months and now all he was wrapped around was a freaking bush. And his back hurt. And when he'd woken up he'd looked around and seen she wasn't there. And he didn't like it one bit. He'd gotten so used to her being there, being a part of him, that it was like his right arm was missing or something.

Not good.

Not good at all.

This wasn't like him. He didn't do that smushy love stuff, he didn't let anyone get under his skin like that. An uncomfortable groan escaped his lips. His back was sore and stiff from sleeping on the uneven root-encrusted ground, he ached all over from all the exercise of the last day or so. And Juliet wasn't there anymore.

'Hey.' The voice pulled his eyes up, forcing him to squint directly into the glare of the bright morning sky. 'Figured you'd be awake about now.' It was Kate, standing above him, hands shoved awkwardly into the pockets of her jeans.

Something in him snapped awake and he pulled himself up, wincing at another twinge in his back. 'Everything OK?'

'Yeah,' she looked distracted, was fiddling with the front of her jeans, pulling his attention downward as she hooked her thumb into one pocket, tugging the waistband down enough to reveal a couple inches of flesh below her T shirt. He dragged his eyes up, pausing for too long in the vicinity of her chest before he finally met her raised eyebrows, a small, knowing smirk on her face. He sighed and shook his head. Things had been so simple back there with Juliet.

'So what gives?' He'd forgotten whether or not he'd asked her that already, but he needed the distraction.

'Uh, well, Charlie survived the night. Jack's back, and...' Kate paused to glance over to where the lumpy, bulky shape of _Sir Doc_ himself was spread out under a tarp about twenty yards away. Even asleep the guy looked like crap - pale, exhausted, filthy, like he hadn't washed or slept in weeks. Like he'd spent the whole night being a hero and saving lives. Well, hadn't they all?

'Alex OK?' he asked her, turning to scan the small makeshift encampment. He couldn't see Alex or Karl, but then the jungle was all around them here. He couldn't see Helo or Sharon either. Or Juliet...

'You seen Juliet?' The words blurted out of his mouth before his brain could engage to stop them. He felt his face heating up.

Kate gave him a surprised stare and frowned. 'She spent the night with Jack at the medical station.' Kate's expression hardened with disapproval. 'I guess she's still there.' Another glance over at Jack, lying alone under his tarpaulin. So Juliet had spent the night with Jack? OK, so jealousy wasn't exactly the most comfortable emotion, but it was certainly powerful enough for him to have to consciously beat down the urge to go right up to Jack and sink his fist in the man's face - no, wake him up first and then take a swing at him, or... _Goddammit_ he was losing it.

He took a deep breath and tried to focus. 'What the hell was she doing there?'

Kate shrugged, her face still a hardened black glare. 'Trying to keep Charlie alive, I guess. Jack had to give him his own blood. He lost a lot of blood.' Another wistful stare at the lump under the tarp.

Sawyer sighed. Right. So Jack had heroically attached a line to his own arm so that he could pump his hero's blood into Charlie and totally impress Juliet. It made him want to puke. He could just imagine Juliet being totally wowed with that sort of level of martyrdom. She liked like kind of crap. He caught himself halfway through the creation of an unpleasant image of Jack standing by Charlie's prone body, bloodied tubes running out of his arm with Juliet in a nurse's uniform smiling and simpering up at him.

This wasn't helping. At all.

He had to get his head out of his stupid, romantic ass so that he could try and figure out more important things like what to do about the time-traveling alien shit-fest that was not so slowly spreading across the whole Island. _That_ was more of a threat to all of them than anything to do with his crappy love life. His first priority was to find Helo and Sharon, at least talk to them, discover what exactly they thought was going on, because they knew more - a lot more - and would have spilled it all months ago if Sawyer and Juliet hadn't laughed so heartily at anything that had even the slightest echo of Star Trek or Star Wars or whatever damn sci fi movie fit the bill.

'You OK?' Kate was staring at him with a look of concern. He opened his mouth to speak, on the verge of telling her the whole thing. She was smart, maybe he could get her take on it, get her help in figuring it all out. But she'd think, what? That he was crazy? It wasn't hard to see how it would go. '_Hey, you know the two hours I was missing? Well, it was really four months and I was on a space ship and all these weird military types are really aliens from another planet. Oh, and yeah, they all speak perfect English because they've got translation chips in their heads and...'_ He gave a snort of amusement and snapped his mouth shut.

There was no way Kate would get it. Her smart, logical mind would just tell him he was crazy and _his _smart, logical mind would have to agree with her. Besides, he was too wrung out to complicate the situation any more by even trying - and what was the point anyway? He couldn't figure it out in his own head. It was so far out there that there was no way she could take it seriously without joining him as a citizen of the Land of the Crazies. Not unless she'd been there, done it, stared Picon in the face and eaten the crazy color-changing food. No way would Kate draw any conclusions beyond the fact that he was crazy - or on drugs. And it wasn't as if what he knew was even enough to hand out any answers - it didn't tell him who Starbuck or Apollo really were, didn't tell him squat about Sharon or Boomer or why the terrible twins were so creepily alike, didn't explain the crazy plane - well, yeah, it did explain the crazy plane. That one really _had _looked like some goddamned alien…

Kate's attention had drifted to where Jack was lying, now hidden by the undergrowth. She was staring over at it wistfully, almost sadly. Guess he wasn't the only one hurting. Love was a bitch.

'You OK?' He asked.

She sucked in a deep breath, visibly pulling herself together before she turned back to him, that same fake, upbeat smile smoothing itself into place as she nodded on a sigh, pushing her hair back. 'So what now?'

'You seen Helo?'

She frowned and then shook her head.

Crap.

He looked around. No sign of Helo or Sharon. But then he couldn't really see anyone, the trees and undergrowth were obscuring everyone except Kate, Jack, and two or three other shelters, all empty. Guess he'd slept late, though from the sun it still looked kind of early. Hell, he didn't even know what time it was. Or what date. All he knew for sure was that Helo should be around here somewhere and that Juliet was a half hour walk away. And he had to focus on one thing at a time. Find Helo, get a hold of Juliet. He'd just have to search the whole camp. It was frustrating as all hell because he'd wanted to talk to Helo and Sharon with Juliet there, get her take on it, her backup. Or something. Besides, he needed to see her, talk to her, straighten it out and-

A shout interrupted his thoughts and he wheeled around, already reaching for the gun in the back of his pants. The cry was coming from over by the shoreline so he took a couple of steps out of the trees to get a better view. Two of the doosies - Frogurt and some girl with long legs and ridiculously short shorts - were running up from around the curve of the bay. They looked scared, but also excited and a little flustered. There was a small, private bathing area out there where a lot of the survivors went to get out of sight of the main camp so they could wash and... do other stuff, and that's where these two were running from.

It took Sawyer two seconds to figure out that the flushed faces were because they were running away something and not just chasing each other in a sexual game of tag. As they ran closer it was clear that the two of them were pointing behind them. Sawyer squinted over to the kitchen where a huddle of people were still getting breakfast. Starbuck and Apollo were the first to react ,both of them immediately snapping into paranoid action mode and starting to head towards Frogurt and the girl. It took Sawyer a second to get his own ass in gear and start to move, following Kate down to the beach. He missed whatever breathless conversation was going on between Frogurt and Starbuck, but whatever it was had gotten both her and Apollo running around to the sex-cove, leaving Frogurt and girl still standing on the beach.

By the time Sawyer had made it to the shoreline, Apollo and Starbuck had already rounded the bay and were out of sight. Sawyer thought about stopping to chat to Frogurt, but he'd already been joined by a bunch of the other survivors and from where he was, he'd had to have taken a detour to get to him. Kate had obviously figured the same thing as she'd already started jogging straight to the cove. He took a deep breath, re-checked the gun was secure in his pants and started to run after her. They weren't going that fast, but even so his legs were sinking into the soft sand and his aching body protested at having to do all this sudden exercise. Once they'd rounded the tiny headland he was out of breath and exhausted, and he huffed in a painful breath when he saw it; sitting squat and unmistakable over one to one side of the camp was a big, orange shaped plastic dome, being sucked and pulled by the water, but definitely washed up onto the shore.

'What the hell is that?' he gasped.

'Life raft.' Kate threw back from a few paces in front of him, already slowing down as she approached it. In two strides he'd grabbed her arm and was pulling her back. 'Slow down,' he hissed, his eyes raking over the thing in front of them. It looked professional - one of those life rafts with a top, like a tent. Not a pile of old driftwood or something they'd use. This was a nice piece of kit - like the sniper rifles and the top of the line equipment those military guys had used to kidnap Alex and kill Ben's people. 'Take it easy, we don't know what's inside.'

The two second pause had enabled Apollo and Starbuck to move in and take control of the situation, both automatically covering each other, Apollo going first, Starbuck standing a little to the side, gun aimed squarely at the little plastic door. Sawyer had to admit that they looked good; they moved like a well-oiled machine. Professional. He shouldn't be, but he was glad - and now not for the first time - that they were there at the front facing whatever danger was inside that thing. For the moment at least. Though whoever was inside could spray bullets at all of them through that plastic covering. He pulled Kate's arm and took a small step back, automatically ducking down to make himself a smaller target.

'Come out with your hands above your head.' Apollo's voice boomed into the depths of the thing.

There was a shuffle of movement and a head emerged from the bell-shape of the life raft. 'Please,' pleaded a woman's voice, 'Whoever you are, we're not here to hurt anyone...'

A woman? Sawyer squinted against the sunlight. She was blonde, round-faced, young, with an English accent.

'Who else is in there?' Apollo's voice was harsh and cold. The female figure stepped out and bent down, pulling someone else out of the raft.

'My brother,' the female voice murmured. Then there were two dark shapes silhouetted against the bright morning sun, and then suddenly a bedraggled, dishevelled young man was standing next to the woman. Sawyer didn't recognize the guy at all. But Apollo semmed to because he gave an immediate grunt of disapproval.

'Daniel Faraday,' he said icily.

'You've met my brother?' the woman's voice was full of hope.

'So you're back,' Apollo ignored her and addressed the man now standing next to her.

Faraday didn't say anything, just glanced over at Penny and then smiled. 'Penny,' he said, relief in his voice, 'now that we're on land, can I make some toast?'

There was an awkward silence, then a sigh from Penny, 'Not now, Daniel.' She brushed her hair away from her eyes in a gesture of exhaustion and defeat. 'Look, I don't know who you are, but I'm looking for someone called Sawyer.'

Sawyer gave a sort of startled double take. 'Huh?' His mind had been reeling. _Daniel Faraday?_ The name was familiar. Then the memory of how Desmond and Locke had suddenly appeared in front of them that last day in the hatch, and then there'd been the trip in that weird space ship, the girl in the bath tub with those tubes coming out of her and... how the hell had he blocked all that out? As if on cue his mind filled with images of space ships and alien chrome plated robots and suddenly his knees began to buckle with the sheer terror of it. Had all that been real?

_Oh. God._

He'd blocked it all out, conveniently not even thought about it all, just focused on Juliet and whether he'd missed four months of his life when all the time there'd been enough evidence to prove he'd been on a goddamn space ship. Or drugged. He'd believed he'd been drugged. Had really believed that.

'... and Sawyer, I'm looking for someone called Sawyer,' he tuned back in when he heard his name, the girl's tone beginning to rise in panic when Apollo and Starbuck showed no signs of stowing the attitude or the guns.

Sawyer took an automatic step forward, not trusting Apollo or Starbuck, his mind still frantically reeling, scrambling to get a hold of the situation. There were too many clues and bits of memories that he didn't have time to piece together. But he remembered Desmond turning up in the hatch, and he was sure he'd said something about Daniel Faraday.

'You're Sawyer?' She asked, hope in her voice now.

'Depends who's asking.' He said evenly.

'Oh thank God,' He watched as Penny almost sagged in relief. 'So we'reon the Island then?'

She turned to face Starbuck, frowning at the uniform. 'And you must be from the space ship.'

There was no trace of irony or humor in her voice. She was serious. Completely serious. Sawyer could feel his eyes bugging out with surprise, his mind in some sort of numb stasis trying to think, figure it all out, put the information into some sort of order. _Penny_ - the name was familiar. Hadn't Desmond-

'You're Penny.' he said, surprising himself, 'Desmond was looking for you.'


	86. Complicated

Chapter 86

Complicated

'You've seen Desmond?' Penny asked, the hope racking up her voice a few notches.

Sawyer took a deep breath. _Here goes nothing_. 'Yeah. Couple of days ago.' He was going to add _'on the space ship,'_ but then he saw Kate stiffen and clamped his mouth shut instead. Kate was giving him a dark look because, yeah, Desmond was supposed to be dead, killed along with Locke when the hatch exploded. He wasn't supposed to have seen the guy four months into the future - wait, did that mean it was the future for Desmond as well? And where were Desmond and Locke anyway? Surely they should have showed up by now? He'd arrived on his own, hours later than Juliet if what she'd said was right, so maybe they hadn't gotten there yet - or maybe Desmond and Locke had come back a few days before all of them, maybe they'd gotten back in time for the hatch explosion and they were dead after all. Or maybe something else had got them, like that big metal robot or some other space age danger. Or maybe he was just plain crazy and his mind was doing the dancing hoola after all.

'Where is he? Is he here with you?' Penny spun around, searching the emptiness of the coast behind them, scanning the empty sea, the dunes to her left, then the portion of land behind his shoulder where the camp was hidden behind the bluff.

Sawyer shifted uncomfortably, wishing now he hadn't said anything. 'I don't know,' he said, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. 'He, um, disappeared.' He could sense Kate getting increasingly restless beside him - not at all impressed with what she saw as a crushing lie. Desmond was supposed to be dead and a couple of days ago Sawyer couldn't have met him because according to Kate's timeline he'd been escaping with Kate from the small Island - and she'd been with him all the time so she should know. Another uncomfortable thought, a flash of memory of him and Kate making out in the cages and that uncomfortable realization that it had only been a few days ago for Kate - like, _real _fresh in her memory, not the nearly four months of faded, almost forgotten memories that he'd conveniently buried. Somehow knowing that it only happened a few days ago for her suddenly began to make it uncomfortably fresh in his mind as well.

_Sonofabitch_. Another deep breath to scrub _that _thought. He had to get out of there, find Juliet and-

'But he's alive?' Penny had taken a desperate step forward and put out a hand to hold his arm, startling out of his thoughts. He automatically took a step back then cursed himself when he saw the devastated expression on her face.

There was another long pause as he carefully chose his words. 'Look, it's kinda complicated.' Was all he managed to say.

'Desmond's moving through time.' She said blankly, determinedly. She must have seen from Sawyer's expression that this wasn't news to him.

His breath caught and he winced, then coughed and ignored Kate's sideways stare before sighing heavily and dropping his voice. 'Yeah, I kinda figured that.' He tried to remember what Desmond had said - something about Daniel Faraday being part of this whole thing? But he couldn't remember more than that. The name, no more, had lodged in his memory.

'So where did you see him, was it here? On the Island?'

Another uncomfortable pause, and this time Sawyer took a moment to check out the other two standing with him as well, the two with guns, who so far had done nothing except follow the conversation, their eyes narrowed in suspicion.

'Can I have some toast?' Daniel stepped forward and tugged Penny's leave. Lost and bedraggled, he looked like a little bird who had slipped and fallen out of its nest, still wet, his clothes clinging to him.

'Not now Daniel,' Penny said quietly. 'Soon.' She turned to Sawyer again, 'Please, if you know anything-'

Sawyer shook his head. 'We lost him, he -' and now what? How was he supposed to explain the crazy space ship, the girl in the tub, the aliens, the- he felt his mouth closing again. 'Like I said, I don't know where he is.'

At this point Apollo must have decided he'd heard enough because he stepped forward, frowning in irritation, squaring up to Faraday, his tone hard. 'How'd you get here?'

Sawyer stepped neatly in front of him and put a hand out. 'Hey, they're with us,' he said quietly, 'So play nice.'

'With you?' Starbuck was the one who gave the barking laugh.

'Well, they know Desmond, and he was kinda with us...' Sawyer paused, because he could feel his own logic slipping. He was going to say something dumb like 'we found him first' or 'Desmond wasn't wearing a uniform,' because as he remembered it Desmond had been wearing some sort of uniform when they'd first found him in the hatch on the Island - the real hatch. And finding him first was meaningless anyway as all of them seemed to be zipping through time like crazy ninjas and there wasn't any before or after anymore.

He paused, thinking it through and not liking the myriad of questions that rose to the surface - like whether or not Desmond was really one of the alien boys and girls and what the hell he'd been doing in that hatch in the first place, and- bottom line was that he wasn't sure why he was defending the odd couple in front of him, but something about the way Desmond had called out Penny's name when he'd arrived on that spaceship, something about the haunted look in Desmond's eyes when he'd sat in front of that blue food - well, Sawyer could relate, was all. And this Penny was important to Desmond, and she was cute and scared and he was a sucker now- Juliet had seen to that- so he was going to look after her.

Besides, Starbuck was looking twitchy with the gun and so, yeah, he'd look out for them. Until they knew more. Had he convinced himself yet? Because he was working a little too hard at it now and... and he cut off the line of thought and turned to Penny, ignoring the defensive bristling of Apollo and Starbuck. 'C'mon, I'll take you to the camp.' He tensed as she breathed a sigh of relief and nodded.

'Look,' she said, 'I can explain, I just-'

'Later, OK?' For some reason he wanted her to keep quiet. He could see she knew more, but not here, not now. He wanted Helo and Juliet and others he could trust. He could sense that Apollo and Starbuck were unstable reminders of just how dangerous this situation could get and he didn't want her to say anything that would set either of them off. Well, Starbuck, anyway. So he stood between Faraday, Penny and the guns, hoping that the bonding they'd all done on their little adventure to save Alex and Karl would see him through until he could hook up with Helo at the beach. He only hoped that Helo was the same guy he'd been for the last four months - the thoughtful, balanced, steady version, not the crazy guy who had shot at him when they'd first met.

'C'mon,' he put a hand gently on Penny's arm and moved into step beside her.

She turned to take Faraday's hand, holding it firmly so that she could lead him along with her. He and gave her a feeble smile before looking around with a frown of confusion as if he had no idea where he was. 'Come on Daniel,' she said softly, giving him a gentle tug.

He turned to face her, the same frown of confusion wrinkling his face. 'I want some toast. With jam and- oh, who are you?' he peered up at her, turning his face a little to the side and bending over to get a look of the bottom of her face.

She shifted uncomfortably. 'I'm Penny.' she said with a forced smile. 'Your sister, remember?'

'Penny.' he rolled the word around his mouth and nodded solemnly. 'Can I watch something?'

'Not now, Daniel. Maybe later.' Her voice was soothing, practiced, another tug and they were moving again. Apollo and Starbuck had taken up station right behind, uncharacteristically silent, though he could sense their intense interest in the minutiae of the exchange. For now Apollo was holding back. Sawyer had no idea why because he knew the guy was action man when he wanted to be - he'd seen that when they'd gotten Alex away from those armed men.

'What's wrong with him?' Sawyer fell into step beside Penny, nodding toward Faraday. Penny was dragging him behind her, the grip on his hand the only thing keeping him moving.

Penny sighed. 'His mind was damaged.' She said quietly.

'How?'

She hesitated. 'Some experiment that went wrong.'

Sawyer grunted.

'Have you met him before?' She asked suddenly.

Sawyer shook his head. 'No.'

She took a deep breath that she let out on a sigh, visibly holding herself together before she nodded, her face set.

'You were on that boat?' he asked her. 'The one that sunk.'

'Yes.'

He nodded. 'Who else was on it?'

'The crew. Are they-?'

He ignored her question. _The crew_. If she knew about the mercenaries who'd abducted Alex she wasn't letting on. Either she was lying or else there was more than one ship. Rousseau had said the mercenaries had arrived by helicopter on the other side of the Island, but that didn't mean anything, the ship that brought it to the Island in the first place could have been anywhere. He glanced over to check that Apollo was listening, catching his gaze for a brief second. Apollo had the usual thoughtful, jaw setting expression on his face, but didn't say anything and for some strange reason he still wasn't trying to interfere. Maybe Apollo was the kind of guy who only made a move when he had all the facts straight. Could be a while before he did anything then, seeing as nothing was adding up.

'Sawyer,' Kate hissed from beside him, 'What's going on? You know these people?'

He gave her a helpless look.

'She said Desmond was traveling through _time?_' Kate persisted.

'Look, it's... complicated-,' was all he could get out before Penny stopped suddenly, tugged to a halt by Daniel pulling back and letting go of her hand. She gave a weary, patient sigh, turned to say something and then stopped.

Daniel was looking at her curiously, then at the beach, the sea, the waves, over at the small group of them in front of him and finally turning to look behind to where Starbuck and Apollo had stopped too, grimly carrying the guns.

'Captain Apollo,' he said quietly, letting his gaze rest for a moment on Starbuck before fixing on him. 'We made it then?'


	87. Fracas

Chapter 87

Fracas

Sanity came suddenly, completely, like a wave washing over him or a heavy blanket covering him with familiar warmth. It was a smooth, solid feeling, like his mother's firm hand on his shoulder when he was a child, or a sudden puff of breeze rustling his hair. In a single, small moment the fog cleared, moving aside for awareness to stride into his perception. He blinked once and took a slow, curious look around, relief flooding him in a series of tingling sensations - as if not just his mind but his whole body was suddenly coming back to life, like he'd sat on his limbs too long and now, _finally_, the blood was flowing freely again. He took in a deep breath as the last, residual trappings of limitation sloughed off of him. His mind was open, his vision clear.

Around him was ocean, sea and surf. And people. Strange people. He looked closer. There were four faces surrounding him. He quickly took in the one he knew: Lee Adama - Commander Adama's son. With a gun and an expression like thunder. Beside him was a blonde haired woman in a military uniform, a similar fierce expression on her face. Like Captain Apollo, she was toting a gun. Where was the Chief? And Desmond Hume? There was no sign of either of them, but it certainly looked as if he was somewhere on Earth - probably near the source of the EM wave. He felt another jolt of satisfaction. He'd gotten it right and they weren't all dead.

The last thing he remembered was the flight on that space ship, his hurried attempt at calculating their route, the threat of some alien attacker throwing his careful logarithms off kilter and making him calibrate on the fly. Then the hyperlight jump, the descent, the pull of land below them that told him he'd got it right and then... nothing. A pit. A blackness, a fog. He frowned, searching his mind for the missing part, the part between then and now, between the cramped confines of the Raptor's interior and the idyllic beach scene before him. He spun slowly, fixing his attention on the others, the man and two women in civilian clothes; jeans and t-shirts. They all looked scruffy, bedraggled, desperate. The man was tall, shaggy hair and beard, his expression kind of wild. Never seen him before. The woman next to him was similarly dressed in jeans, T-shirt, tired looking, dark hair. Again, unfamiliar. And finally the third civilian, standing a little apart. A little way behind her was an orange shape that he identified as a life raft. She was watching him carefully, her hands fidgeting with her sodden T-shirt. She seemed familiar, like someone he was sure he _should _know, but when he searched his memory he had no recollection of ever seeing her before.

Where on earth had all these new people come from? And... he spun around again, looking for any sign of the plane. The beach was empty, the only shape breaking up the picture of sand and surf was the ugly orange blob of the life raft. He supposed the three others had arrived in that, shipwrecked on this beach. And he and Apollo had come in the plane, and the fair haired woman must have arrived in one of the other space ships he'd identified from his experiments in Oxford last week. Had it really only been a week? No, less than a week, he'd only been in that prison cell a couple of days. But the days were blurry, he had chunks of time missing. He couldn't remember anything beyond being in the Raptor before they activated the hyperlight drive. His memory cut out there, suddenly and definitively. He must have blacked out, his brain must have done another reboot. He'd supposed it only happened the first time. He'd have to revise that theory then.

'Daniel?' It was the civilian woman, the one with the wet T shirt, taking a step toward him, hand outstretched and a light, false smile on her face. 'They're asking us to go with them, we're just going to-' She stopped when she saw his expression.

He gave her a curious, surprised stare and then turned away from her to continue scanning the beach. 'This must be the source of the EM wave.' Faraday squinted up at the sky, pinching his eyes shut a little at the brightness of the sun before settling his attention back on Apollo, 'What happened? Where's the plane?'

Apollo was eyeing him sourly. He tightened his grip on the rifle. 'It crashed.'

'Crashed?' Faraday echoed. 'Oh.' There was a pause. 'Did everyone survive?'

Apollo's eyes narrowed but he didn't say anything.

There was another long pause. 'Desmond Hume?' he asked, then, 'The Chief?'

He caught Apollo's black look and winced. He'd hoped to have won him round once he'd proven himself by getting them here, but clearly even that wasn't enough. 'I think I can remember the coordinates and figure out how to get you back safely, but we do need a plane with hyperlight capabilities.' He turned to the blonde girl in uniform. 'I'm assuming that _you _came in a plane? Tell me it's working and didn't crash.' Of course, the pull of the piggyback wave would be stronger near the source point and it would have been hard to land a plane safely. He should have thought of that and compensated by bringing them in further away and then allowing a slower descent angle and...

'Daniel?' The civilian woman was speaking more urgently to him now, her face creased with concern. 'What's happening, are you-' her voice cut off, then she took a deep breath, steadying herself. 'Are you back?'

_Back?_ He frowned, peering at her. 'Do I know you?' He asked.

'It's Penny. Your sister.'

'Sister?' He frowned harder. _Sister_. Something deep and dark stirred inside of him. Some brute memory, a shadow of a thing, a hazy, fuddled impression of conversations and a house and- he shook his head. Then the woman - Penny - turned pleadingly to Apollo. 'He's not well, he-'

_What on earth was going on?_ He turned to Lee Adama. 'Tell me what happened.' he said firmly.

Apollo frowned. 'You know what happened,' he said icily.

'We were on the plane, you activated the jump drive and then I don't remember any more.'

Apollo stiffened, his face hardening.

Faraday ignored the negative body language, figuring reason and sensible discussion would win out in the end. 'Where's Desmond?' He asked again.

'With you.'

'With me?' he asked, surprised. 'And the Chief?'

More silence. Really, this wasn't helping. And there wasn't time. He decided to try another tack, nodding instead to the uniformed woman next to Apollo. 'She got here in a plane, yes?'

He took Apollo's silence as assent. 'And that one didn't crash?'

'They all crashed.'

'Tell me one of them is still working,' he said, feeling a rush of unease. If there wasn't a working hyperlight drive then his chance of getting them out of there was growing frighteningly remote.

'It's working. But you'd know about all that, wouldn't you?' Apollo's voice was calm but he could hear the pinched anger behind the words. Even so, he gave a sigh a relief. A working plane. Good.

The blonde woman snorted.

'Look, I don't think you realize the seriousness of the situation. If you ever want to get back to your own people you need to find a plane very _very _soon, get on it and leave. I can give you the coordinates and get you back there but you have to understand that the time constraints you're working under are very tight.' Faraday's tone was patient, each word given emphasis as if he were talking to a bunch of fifth graders in school. He cocked his head and couldn't hide his impatience. 'So. The plane?'

It was then that the blonde one seemed to snap, hissing something under her breath to Apollo before suddenly launching into action. Faraday felt his whole body tensing, automatically jerking aside as she pushed past and strode up the beach.

More silence. No one moved. No one spoke. Apollo's jaw twitched, but he stared straight ahead, following the receding figure with his eyes. One beat, then two. 'Is she going to get the plane?' Faraday asked hopefully.

'Maybe. Let's go.' Apollo gestured for them all to move up the beach, twitching the rifle, and Faraday automatically took a step forward. The bedraggled woman was still standing there. _Penny_. Sister Penny. A nun?

'What's going on, Sawyer, who are these people?' The dark haired woman behind gave him an uneasy look. Faraday glanced over to see the other man shrug helplessly. It had to be confusing for them, they'd clearly just been shipwrecked in that life raft, met by Captain Apollo and the blonde soldier. At gunpoint. But that still didn't explain what were they doing here - especially what a _nun _was doing here. He glanced over at Sister Penny. She didn't look very nun-like, but then most of them didn't anymore. He'd seen some in Oxford, their nun uniforms and headdresses conspicuously absent with only clunky crosses around their necks to identify them. He chanced another look over to see if there was some sort of religious symbol dangling over the woman's chest, but he saw nothing but wet T-shirt and when she caught him staring he smiled reassuringly and quickly looked away.

00000

Sawyer gritted his teeth. What the hell was he supposed to say to Kate? He'd stood there, slack jawed, when Faraday started spouting all that stuff about spaceships and EM waves and now the words wouldn't come out even if he wanted them to. As he looked around the little group of people, the weirdest thing was that only Kate looked surprised. No one else. Even the new woman took it in stride, like it was the most normal, rational thing to be talking about. Looked like he wasn't the only crazy around here after all.

He heaved a breath out of his tight lips, steadying himself. He'd resisted the urge to run after Starbuck. She'd taken off with that look in her eyes - the one they'd all quickly learnt to associate with trouble. But Apollo's warning look and the way he'd adjusted his grip on the rifle had made Sawyer stop and continue their slow, steady march to the bluff. Apollo was pissed at the arrival of the new guy and no way was Sawyer going to let him vent by giving him the opportunity to shoot him in the back. But three seconds after _that _thought, he wished he _had _gone after Starbuck as the sound of shouting hit them as they rounded the beach.

There was chaos in front of him, people moving in all directions so that it took him a moment to separate out what was happening, to isolate those who were skittering away from the action, moving up the beach to the safety of the jungle edge, from those who were moving toward the cause of the disturbance. He finally honed in on Starbuck - of course - the source of the trouble, who by now had roughly dragged Boomer out of her shelter and was shaking her determinedly by the collar of her uniform. Boomer's eyes were open but were glazed and confused. She made no move to resist, made no move to do anything, just let herself be shaken about like a rag doll. Sawyer started forward, then checked himself when he felt a warning hand on his arm. Apollo's hand was restraining him pulling him back and he stopped sharply and stood there watching helplessly, then continued the slow, steady march towards the source of the trouble, powerless to intervene.

Apollo had let Starbuck off her leash.

Apollo was walking steadily forward, watching the scene with a cold, calculating efficiency. Kate put a questioning hand on his arm and he looked briefly down at her, cringing inwardly at how ridiculously weak he felt. It wasn't that he didn't have the guts to help Boomer, it was more that he had no idea who the bad guys were anymore. And Starbuck - well, he'd seen the girl shoot, she could have killed Boomer a million times already and if yelling in her face was the worse she was going to do then that wasn't so bad, was it? But even so, he felt a pang of sympathy for Boomer, standing drunkenly swaying while Starbuck gave her a mouthful of vitriol. Starbuck was hissing something in Boomer's face, right up close. From this distance Sawyer couldn't make out what she was saying, but now Helo was there, pulling Starbuck back by one arm. Right. Did that make Starbuck the bad guy? Was he still supposed to trust Helo's judgment or what?

Sawyer crept forward at Apollo's steady pace, the scene slowly unfolding in front of them as Starbuck turned on Helo, gave him a shove, pushing him away from her and yelling loud enough so that everyone could hear. 'She did something to the frakking plane, Helo! She's a frakking Cylon! She knows where it is!' Helo held his hands up, trying to pacify her. He said something back, but the wind caught the sound and Sawyer couldn't hear, but Starbuck was taking another step towards Boomer, had grabbed her again and was shouting now. 'You are going to tell me how to get that frakking plane!'

'Hey!' Helo again. 'Calm down,' he had her more firmly by the shoulder this time and she roughly shook him off and spun around to face him. A small crowd had gathered, more confident now that this interesting argument wasn't going to wind up with any of them getting shot. They were pressing closer so Sawyer had to strain to see over their heads, though Starbuck was yelling good and loud now so at least he could hear everything clearly.

'We need that plane, Helo!'

Helo looked confused. 'What plane?'

'Oh for frak's sake, the Raider I flew here in.'

'You came here in a _Cylon Raider_?'

'Yeah. And Boomer did some weird Cylon thing to it, which was why it started attacking us, and now it's gone. Probably to get more of its little friends and bring them back. And we need it. Unless you want to tell us where you're hiding the plane _you _came in.' she glared over at him, her gaze skimming to where Sharon was standing, pale and uncertain under the shelter of a tarp about twenty yards behind him.

'I didn't come in a plane.' Helo's expression was hard.

'Yeah, right.' Starbuck shook her head with a bitter smile.

'No, look, I don't know how it happened... but we just… appeared.'

She was glaring at him now, her look hard. 'You're lying. You're protecting her. Guess that's how you it goes when you start _frakking _Cylons.'

A flicker of anger crossed Helo's face but he reined it in quickly and took a deep, slow breath. 'Look, like I said, we just showed up here - I have no idea how or why, but that's the way it was.'

By this time Apollo had trudged their little group right up to the crowd, close enough for Sawyer to reach out and touch the nearest figure standing in his way. Frogurt, of course. Then Faraday stepped forward and started speaking, raising his voice to carry over the crowd. 'He's right. A ship isn't necessary,' he cleared his throat and flinched a little when all eyes turned to him. 'Even though the impetus has to come from a hyperlight drive anyone inside the envelope will be projected through space time without any sort of vehicle.' He paused at the sea of blank faces. 'It's because the hole is too small for big ships,' he explained. 'If the ship is too large then the hyperlight drive will give you the initial thrust, but - you become the ship, if you like. We are all particles of energy, little pockets of the stuff, so, in effect, we become the plane. In the end all you're doing is piggy backing on an EM wave.' His voice faltered when he noticed the growing bloom of irritation of Starbuck's face.

'Who the hell do you think you are?' Starbuck asked with a growl, turning on Faraday now, swirling around in the little circle of people like some fierce animal. 'Another frakking Cylon?' Everyone took a step back and Sawyer was relieved to see that Apollo had finally entered the ring. Though he was ignoring Starbuck and looking steadily at Faraday, his expression unreadable.

'I can get you the plane.' The voice came from the edge of the little group, to Sawyer's right. Sawyer turned to see the now familiar green of yet another military uniform - not the complicated pilot outfit, but the same slack, comfortable fatigues that Starbuck was wearing.

'Chief?' Apollo adjusted his stance to give him some room, allowing the one they called the Chief to step firmly into the circle. He was tall, thick set. Sawyer hadn't had a good look at him before, this guy had stayed on the periphery when they'd all first met up, and then Charlie had gotten shot and, well, hell and basket were the words that came to mind after that. Somehow this guy had kind of slunk around in the background - to the point where Sawyer could barely remember seeing him. But now there he was, right in there, positioned protectively in front of Boomer. She was looking bad now, covered in sweat, her eyes still alight with fever. Jack must still be asleep or he'd have been right there too, wading heroically into the fray. Sawyer took an imperceptible step back. He wasn't Jack and didn't like the way this was going, didn't like the desperate, heated tempers. He'd been in enough fights to know that this situation could get ugly fast.

'I'll get you the plane,' the Chief was talking evenly, directing all his attention on Starbuck.

Starbuck narrowed her eyes. 'And how are you going to do that?' she was looking at him suspiciously now.

'I can get it.' he said quietly.

Another long, heavy silence and then Starbuck threw back her head and laughed. 'Oh no, don't tell me, another Cylon.'

Silence. The Chief just met her eyes, not saying anything.

Starbuck gave a mocking smile and shook her head. 'I should have guessed when that thing stopped right near you. Had a nice chat did you?'

Sawyer hesitated, confused, then realized what she was talking about. His mind went back to the attack - when that plane flew right in from the ocean and started shooting. Or didn't. When it had stopped right in front of them and this Chief guy collapsed, shuddering with some sort of seizure. It hadn't looked so much like a 'nice chat'. But yeah, something had happened. So... he felt his mind creaking into gear again... did that make this new guy a Cylon? And what the hell was a Cylon anyway – a machine? Really?

'He's not a Cylon.' Sawyer whipped round to see Sharon standing beside Helo, keeping herself a little apart from the group but close enough to see and hear what was going on. 'The Chief isn't a Cylon.' She repeated louder.

Starbuck gave a snort of disbelief.

'No, really. He isn't. He's just covering for Boomer.' Her eyes met Boomer's and locked. Boomer flinched and looked away. She looked as if she was going to be sick, her expression one of tightened nausea. Sawyer couldn't get over how alike they were, like, _identical _alike. Except for the bandage and the way Boomer looked like she was going to keel over any second. Even their voices were the same. It kind of creepy.

'Look, you want the plane, I'll get the plane, OK?' The Chief took a small step towards Starbuck, now totally blocking her from Boomer.

Sawyer wasn't surprised to see Starbuck's hand edging over her gun. The Chief, he noticed, was unarmed, standing there in front of her with his arms at his sides. That took guts. Sawyer sucked in a breath and debated stepping forward, saying something funny, doing anything to dissolve the tension. He wasn't about to stand there while Starbuck went on another killing spree. But right as he was about to elbow Frogurt aside and opened his mouth to say something, already mentally cursing himself for his stupidity, Apollo must have come to the same conclusion because he stepped forward, turned to the Chief and said clearly, 'You think you can get that plane?'

'Yes Sir, I do.'

Apollo sucked in a breath, then nodded.

'I'll need to get access the transponder from Lieutenant Valerii's Raptor.' The Chief turned his head slightly to Boomer, who ducked her head down, refusing to meet his eyes. He continued more quickly, 'I can use it to broadcast a signal and then-' He stopped. Starbuck was shaking her head.

'There's a radio transmitter,' Kate offered. She'd been standing quietly next to him, and he knew that this was probably the only part of the conversation she'd understood. Hell, it was the only part _he'd_ understood. But kudos to her for even latching onto that much.

The Chief ignored her and continued to watch Starbuck. A ripple of discomfort went through Kate beside him. She didn't like being out of the loop, he realized. And none of them knew what was going on here. It was like watching some weird battle, not knowing who was lining up and why. He didn't' like the thought of being in the cross fire. He hadn't come this far to end up as collateral damage in a fight he didn't even begin to understand. He put a steadying hand on Kate's shoulder, surprised at the tiny shudder that went through her and the corresponding surge of raw physical energy that shot back threw him. He took his hand away.

'I'll get you the transponder,' Starbuck was saying. 'But it's not with the Raptor, I hid it.'

'Then I'll need to go with you.'

'No. I'll get it.'

'The plane might attack if you do. It needs to be me.' The Chief's voice was firm, even. He never once broke eye contact with her. Brave man.

'Fine. So we go together.' Starbuck took out her gun and pointed it at the Chief. 'Let's go.'

'You need backup?' Apollo asked her quietly as she swept passed him.

'Like I'd trust any of these people?' she gestured dismissively around her. Apollo grunted and that was it, they were gone, pushing out of the circle and up past the kitchen area. Sawyer watched their backs as Starbuck and the Chief disappeared alone into the cover of the trees.


	88. Tree Frog

Chapter 88

Tree Frog

Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol. The name sounded so... long-winded. And familiar... but it wasn't him, wasn't how he felt now. His name was Galen. Just Galen. Or Tyrol, when Sam was pissed at him. The rest felt strange. But he had memories, lots of them, of life on Galactica, of being the Chief. Fond memories, hard memories. He hadn't been particularly high up, nothing more than a grunt, really, slogging away in the heart of the ship, locked inside the hanger deck of one Battlestar or another. Had Cavil scripted that all along? Had his life been mapped out that way, a sick kind of joke where Cavil stood by and laughed to see him being subservient when he'd been the one most vocal in arguing for equality and dignity, for first names informality? Ironic how Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol had learned to say 'sir' almost every sentence. Yeah, Cavil must have been laughing his ass off.

'It's up here,' Starbuck gestured ahead into a stand of bushes, stepping back to let him go first. She was armed and making a big show of it. He'd liked her on Galactica. Liked her passion, her ability to fly, her attunement with all things mechanical. Even her attitude was part of what he admired about her. But now all he could think about was the gun she was waving in his face.

They'd been walking the best part of the morning, searching for the spot where Starbuck said she had dumped the transponder. He was hot and tired and his head still felt like someone had blown a hole in it after his little meet up with the Raider the day before. Added to that the fact that he had no idea where he was, where any of them were. The words of Daniel Faraday were gong around his head, forcing themselves into some twisted sort of sense. Over and over he heard Faraday's speech about an EM surge and Helo traveling through space without a ship. Theoretically, it was perfectly plausible, he knew that. Knew enough about science and the way things worked to understand that in _theory_ it was possible. At least he did now, now that the part of his brain that Cavil had excised had decided to start functioning again. He could thank the Raider for that. Had it known who he really was? It must have sensed something, clocked him on its scanner. They had put retinal recognition into all the fighter planes, and even though Cavil had clearly tampered with their programming, he obviously hadn't erased it totally because that plane had recognized him. He'd be dead now if it hadn't.

There was too much to think about, to figure out. Too little time. He was desperately searching for all the pieces, trying to fit them all together, find a way to survive this, to get them all out of it, to do something to save the situation, to save his people. All of them, including Galactica and the fleet and... yeah. Right.

His first task was to get through the next couple of hours without getting shot.

Apollo looked like he'd thought Starbuck was going crazy overboard with her Cylon accusations. But as it happened Starbuck was right. Completely right. And right to be suspicious, right to question anything and everything that she knew, to question _everyone _that she knew. Her hated XO, for example. Cylon. Galen couldn't believe he'd ever called Saul Tigh 'sir'. And Ellen. Oh yes, there she was in background, Saul's erstwhile wife driving him to drink and driving him crazy. As usual. Another laugh for Cavil.

He clomped through a stand of bushes, ducking his head as he stepped through, his back itching as he sensed where Starbuck was walking silently behind him. Would she shoot him in the back? Maybe. Not yet though, she wanted him to get the plane. He wondered what she was thinking, how far her suspicions were taking her. He couldn't tell if Apollo had taken that Number Eight's assertion that he wasn't a Cylon at face value - though why Apollo was trusting a Cylon was unclear. And what was the Eight was doing there in the first place? With Helo. And pregnant? She'd looked pregnant. Which meant... well, it meant that Helo had feelings for her. A lot of feelings for her.

They'd had huge discussions about birth and fertility. None of them had wanted to rely on resurrection alone to perpetuate their new species, but the problem was that it was infants in adult bodies who emerged from the tanks, infants who were fully formed physically but hadn't the life experience or maturity to be parents. And it wouldn't have been fair to burden them with kids and parenthood before they were ready to deal with they had all agreed to give them a childhood, give them that time to explore and make mistakes and just be kids. They'd made it so that fertility was tied in with adult feelings of love and commitment, and no model would be able to conceive and bear a child unless or until that love and commitment was present on both sides. It wasn't an ideal arrangement - the calibration was complex - arguments and disagreements were normal in all relationships, so they'd had to adjust for that in deciding when a child would be carried to term, and of course they hadn't had a chance to try out the system in practice because Cavil had implemented his nasty little plan before they'd had a chance to watch any of them mature into adulthood. But as it stood it was written into the code, so deep that Cavil obviously hadn't touched it. Which mean that the Number Eight and Helo had to have loved each other - and continued on some basic level to love each other - in order for her to be carrying a child at all. That love and commitment had to still be there even though Helo now knew she was a Cylon.

Which meant that Helo's loyalty didn't lie primarily with Starbuck and Apollo anymore. Or with Galactica. Or the fleet. _Good to know._

Helo had been lost on Caprica, Galen knew that much. A Caprica presumably full of Cylons. Who had he met there? Helo was loyal and a good soldier. The Chief doubted he'd be suckered by Cavil. Or any of them. But until he talked to him, found out how much contact Helo had had with the others, he wouldn't know for sure whether Helo was a plant, a spy, or just stupid in love with someone who looked just like Boomer.

'Up there.'

He looked to where Starbuck was gesturing. The transponder was tucked in the crook of a branch of an old gnarled tree. He could just see it twenty feet up. She must have jammed a few stones around it, leaving a sort of sealed space where he could just see the edge of the casing poking through. Why she'd hidden it up a tree and under stone was beyond him, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to the signal, though the elevation would give any Raider pause, making them do a visual recon to figure out why it wasn't at ground level. So yeah, made sense. Weird, sensible instinctual Starbuck sense. He knew she'd have no clue why she did it like that, just acted on instinct and shoved the damn thing up a tree. But yeah, it would have bought some time and given them a chance to hide if any Cylons had come snooping around.

She gestured again. 'So go get it.' She gave him that mocking _frak you_ look she usually reserved for incompetent knuckledraggers.

He took a deep breath and steadied himself, swinging up onto the first branch and awkwardly climbing the tree, not trusting the branches that would have held Starbuck's weight but might not be so accommodating to his, and wondering sourly at what point he'd outlive his usefulness. Starbuck was full of fire but she wasn't cruel or stupid. Shooting that other guy had been an accident - if no one had intervened she'd have calmed down and everyone would have been fine. So... he just had to carry on and not get too hung up on her sour mood. Or the gun.

He finally reached the branch, not liking the way it swayed under his weight. Starbuck stood under the tree, not taking her eyes off of him, the gun cocked and ready. What did she think he was going to do? Call a whole bunch of Cylons? Of course. This was a huge risk for her; for all she knew there'd be a whole unit of Raiders come screaming out of the sky. No wonder she was jumpy. He shimmied over to where the tree forked and eased the transponder out from the cradle of stones, picking it up carefully and examining it in his hands. He'd been trapped on Kobol when they'd fitted it to Boomer's Raptor, had only heard reports later of how she'd flown off on that mission, bravely and stupidly getting herself killed blowing up a death star. And now here she was, on this Island, sick and confused. And here was the transponder.

He took a deep breath, shoving aside thoughts of Boomer and the sight of her with that huge bloodied bandage on her face. That was Cavil's fault. And by extension it was his. He should have stopped it earlier, they all should have. To hell with Ellen and her histrionics, the whole Model One should have been scrapped. It had been a prototype, the first flawed attempt that should have been destroyed when they realized it was a dud.

He turned the transponder over in his hands, looking for the tell-tale smoothness that indicated a fusion pad. Cavil might have tinkered with their memories but he'd left the basic design in place. He put a hand on the smooth section, palm flat against it, hoping that the electrical current from his palm would be enough to activate the device, hoping that his own signal would still be recognized as Admin Override. He held his breath, waiting. The sweat was rolling down his back and his palm stuck uncomfortably to the molding. Starbuck was still standing twenty feet below him looking up suspiciously.

A long pause. Too long. But right when he was about to give up there was a sort of click inside him, the familiar opening of pathways that told him he was in. _Connection made._ _Authentication complete._ Inside his mind the familiar set of numbers scrolled down his vision - a weird sort of superimposed mass of figures and numbers that was both strange and alarming familiar. He blinked and almost pulled his hand away. Then steadied himself and concentrated on the sequence of numbers, forcing himself to relax. It wasn't long before he was reading them again without effort or strain.

He ordered a scan of the area, looking for other Cylon transponders, collecting data about the Raptor's descent, its last mission, the basic specs of the place they were in now. Of course the base star had known exactly who Boomer was. He could see the whole interaction between the transponder that had been fitted to Boomer's Raptor and the Base Star. They'd let her in. Let her blow up the base star. Interesting. And then the Raptor had pulled away, a hyperlight jump and then... here. The transponder made no sense of the jump itself, recorded a huge EM surge and then an out of control descent to the Island. And Boomer's ridiculous flying skills. Another of Cavil's jokes, he realized. Or cover for her, because in her natural state she would have been an excellent pilot, easily matching any of the others, Starbuck included. But yes, smart move, Cavil, to make the Cylon pilot a dunce.

'What's going on?' Starbuck's voice cut through from where she was standing right below him, forcing him to look down.

'Just give me a second, OK?'

'What are you doing?'

He didn't know how much to say - that the signal would be better from up there? That he didn't want to do this down on the ground where she could watch every step? That the gun was making him nervous? He'd never liked guns, had actually argued for a Cylon nation of total pacifists, of a people unable to threaten or defend themselves. He'd been outvoted, of course. Especially by Sam, ever the practical, arguing fiercely that there was a difference between being aggressive and warlike and being able to defend yourself from aggression. If they were perceived as weak, he'd argued, then they'd be destroyed. Better to be strong and gentle.

So much for that idea. One genocidal rampage later and no one could argue that _that_ had worked out well.

'I've just done a scan of the area,' he finally said, 'There aren't any other Cylon planes here, the Raider you came in is the only one in range.' He knew it wasn't much, that she wasn't going to believe it, but at least the element of doubt might stop her shooting him the moment his feet touched the ground. 'I'm just trying to contact the Raider now.' he finished, then shifted awkwardly in the crook of the tree, twisting a little away from Starbuck and turning his attention back to the device, this time scanning for the Raider. He blotted out the threat she represented, pushed down his fear and focused on the Raider. He found it in less than a millisecond; it was hovering about a mile away, its location somewhere to the North of his position.

_REPORT. _He silently sent the command over the transponder connection, and there it was, the familiar string of numbers and lines of code, a huge batch of information telling him everything about the Raider's condition. It was injured, unsure what to do, hurt and totally confused by this environment. He quickly sent it his authentication details and felt the plane almost jump for joy. It made him smile. He'd always liked this particular design, the eagerness and optimism of the Raiders had been something he'd built into them. Ellen, of course, had argued for fierceness, but he'd gotten the final vote, arguing that big dogs and animals needed to have sweet dispositions to make them more manageable to handle. She'd fallen for that one, of course, as he knew she would.

He did a complete scan of the plan, checking to see if it could still fly, and then ordered it to land back at the beach, closed and inert until he reached it. Any attack on it and it was to withdraw to a safe place and await orders.

_Done and acknowledged._

He adjusted his grip on the transponder, changing the position of his hands so that the connection was severed. Then he lowered himself down, tucking the transponder in his shirt to leave his hands free. He jumped awkwardly down the last three feet, landing heavily.

'Well?'

'It'll be at the beach when we get back.'

Her eyes narrowed.

_Yeah, you guessed right,_ he thought. _I'm a Cylon. Pleased to meet you._

'So you really are a Cylon.' Her voice was even but he knew that tone too well. She wanted a fight, wanted to goad him into something she could grab a hold of and wrestle to the floor. She was mad. And no wonder. He wasn't exactly dancing in daisies about it all either.

He didn't answer. What was there to say?

'So you and Boomer were both in it together, trying to destroy Galactica and the rest of the fleet.'

'No.'

She snorted.

'No, it's-' he took a sharp breath, 'it's not what you think.'

'Right. So what is it?'

'It wasn't meant to be this way-'

Another derisory snort, 'No, Galactica and the rest of the fleet wasn't supposed to survive. But it did. And you know what? The only thing keeping you alive right now is the fact that I need that plane. Though you wouldn't die, would you? You'd just pop back up in a new frakking body. That's what you all do, isn't it?'

'Actually, no...' He hesitated, not sure that opening his mouth right now was a good idea. He knew Starbuck in this mood and talking back to her just riled her up more, but she needed to know, needed to really know what was going on, that all of them had everything to lose and that he wanted to help and wasn't going to hide anything. His mouth felt dry as he answered her. 'If we're as far away as I think we might be then, if you killed me I'd be dead. Plain dead.'

'Right.'

Another hesitation, then a what-the-hell feeling that had the words spilling from his mouth. She wasn't someone to lie to, she was smart and given the facts surely, even Starbuck would see... 'It relies on technology, on a ship within range for the essential data to be transferred. I don't know where we are, if we're out of range of a Resurrection ship, then-'

'We're on Kobol.'

'I don't think so. Those others seem to think that we're on Earth.'

'Yeah, well, the others are all Cylons.'

'No, only Boomer and the other Eight are Cylons.'

'Eight?'

'Her model number.'

'Oh, right, yes of course you'd all have numbers wouldn't you?' A pause. 'So what was Leobin?'

'Leobin? A two.'

'Two.'

'He was the second model to come out of the tanks.'

Another derisory snort. 'And you?'

'I don't have a number.'

'Of course you don't.'

There was an awkward silence. He didn't want her to join the dots, didn't want her to figure out that there was no number for him because he'd made them all, made the goddamned lot of them. The queasy feeling came back into his stomach and sat like a brick ready to throw up the words. He liked Starbuck, had known her since her transfer to Galactica and he wanted to fix this and he wanted her to help, but saying all that probably wouldn't get him anywhere. If anything it might convince her to shoot him after all. And then he wouldn't be able to fix anything. Starbuck shifted her stance, dropping back a little to give herself more room to react if he chose to attack her, compensating for his Cylon superpowers. Not that he had any. The models yes, they had enhanced speed and motor functions, but the five of them were so ordinary it was depressing. She could take him any day of the week.

They walked the rest of the way in an uneasy silence. He was still holding the transponder, keeping a tight grip on the familiar smooth feel of it, it's planes and lines, every inch of it pulling back memories of the past. They'd talked long and hard about size, shape, materials, connectivity, durability. Long discussions far into the night. Exciting discussions. They'd been so hopeful, the dream had felt so good, so alive. He wondered where Sam was now. He scanned his new, rusty memory and came up a blank. He hadn't seen him in the fleet, hadn't... then he stopped. Of course. The triad player. Samuel Anders. A professional sportsman. He was famous. Ha. That couldn't have been Cavil's goal. But it also meant that Sam had perished along with most of Caprica. Had he resurrected? For all he knew the first thing Cavil had done was to poison all their tanks as well. Maybe now their life cycle was truly ending. When he was dead he was dead. He looked uneasily at Starbuck. Maybe sooner rather than later.


	89. Summer Camp

Chapter 89

Summer Camp

It was hot. The sun was beating down mercilessly and Apollo was almost dead on his feet - when was the last time he'd slept? Days ago, before he'd busted Faraday and Desmond out of Galactica. Three days by his count, though he had been unconscious for some of that so he couldn't be sure. And he still couldn't afford to drop his guard. He shifted the rifle in his hands. It had been about half an hour since the Raider had glided down out of the jungle, flying low and landing smoothly on the beach about fifty yards away. Everyone on the beach had stiffened, stared and then waited. He'd taken a couple of steps toward it, half expecting Starbuck to climb out from inside. But the thing had been silent and still. That had worried him even more. If Starbuck or the Chief weren't flying it, then that meant it was flying all by itself, which meant...

He'd told everyone to get back, keep a safe distance, was relieved when both Sayid and Sawyer had gotten the message and quickly stood guard over the Raider, their firearms aimed loosely at the place where the entry hatch was tucked down on the left side. Sawyer, he noticed, had a colonial side arm. From Helo? The pregnant Cylon? He wasn't sure what that meant, but he didn't like it.

The plane had landed with its right side facing them, its nose pointing out to the ocean, ready to take off and skim away over the water. It had drifted noiselessly, landed with barely a sound and then stayed perfectly still. Dormant.

And then they waited.

He told the rest of the beach camp refugees to get back in the cover of the trees, and at first they had obeyed, but then slowly, one by one, they had drifted to the kitchen area to snack, take a drink, then wash clothes, walk the beach. Within an hour they were completely ignoring the plane, like it was part of the furniture and had never done them any harm. They acted like they were immune to any of the dangers around them, like they had some sort of magical padding. Only Sayid, Sawyer and Kate seemed to take the threat seriously.

And Helo.

Though he had no clue where Helo stood in terms of loyalty right now. The big man was hovering outside the tent where Sharon was lurking. Racetrack was standing a little ways off, ostensibly guarding Boomer, though all she was doing was lounging around, her firearm holstered, her back to Boomer, watching whatever else was going on and occasionally sharing a smile or a comment with the refugees. Was she Cylon too? He shook his head, trying to order his thoughts and toss the sleep out of his brain. He had to think, figure this out before Starbuck got back. He didn't want to send her off in the Raider and bring back more people from Galactica if this was one big giant trap. Maybe that's what it was, a sink for all their ships and pilots to drain the life out of the military personnel and the ships protecting Galactica and the fleet. The fact that he was here was a coo - the Commander's son. His father wouldn't leave easily, would keep sending people out here looking for him if anyone gave him the chance or the coordinates. It had to be a trap. He hadn't taken the Cylons seriously, he realized that now. Perhaps his father had been right.

He'd sat the girl and Daniel Faraday down in some shade alongside the kitchen area, allowing Rose to get them food and water, his only stipulation that Faraday shut the frak up. His constant talking was driving him nuts and stopping him from thinking straight. He wanted to talk to Helo, de-brief him properly, but he didn't know the guy, didn't know what side he was on anymore. Apollo had found himself on Galactica right at the beginning of the war and Helo had been in that first engagement with Boomer and then been lost on Caprica until now. Starbuck had served with him for nearly two years so she knew him pretty well - or thought she did. Was Helo another Cylon? Starbuck didn't seem to think so, which was odd as she was seeing Cylon everywhere. And the Chief? He almost wanted to laugh. The Chief was the most unlikely candidate. At this rate, even his father and the XO were going to turn out to be Cylons as well. This was crazy.

But the fact was that he had no idea who to trust, no idea who was on his side and who wasn't. All he could see was that right now Sawyer and Sayid were pointing guns at the Cylon plane and Helo and Racetrack were ineffectually hanging around the camp. He shook his head wearily. He needed to get some shut eye soon or he'd be hallucinating even more Cylons.

He wondered what had happened to the doc. Someone said he was asleep somewhere, then that he'd gone back to the medical station while he and Starbuck had been at the beach rounding up Faraday and Penny. Either way he couldn't see him and wasn't going to go looking until he'd figured out what Faraday and this girl were up to. Penny was sitting on the ground where he'd put her, tight lipped and silent. She looked exhausted. And scared, like this was the last place on Earth she wanted to be, constantly scanning the beach like she was looking for something. Or someone. She hadn't said much. Rose was crooning over her and Faraday looked completely disinterested. So much for being brother and sister. He'd straight out pegged her as a Cylon simply because of the lie.

And now the plane had arrived suddenly out of nowhere and was sat right there on the beach. At first Faraday had leapt up enthusiastically, rushing over to go to it, but Apollo had stood in his way and growled at him to get back. That thing wasn't safe, and nor, he suspected, was Faraday. The combination of both of them wasn't going to happen on his watch. Besides, nothing was happening here without Starbuck, and when she hadn't emerged from the plane he'd gotten worried for her. There was no way that plane would have landed there on its own unless... yeah, unless the Chief had somehow told it to, which meant that... the Chief was a Cylon too. His headache had just gotten worse.

What a complete cluster-frak this was turning into. He'd thought his father and Laura Roslin were paranoid but now... heck, now he wished they'd let loose with the paranoia a little more. They could have a done with a little more suspicion and a little trust back there on Galactica. He took a deep breath, shifted his stance to ease the growing ache in his back and legs, and continued his vigil, standing guard over Faraday and Penny, keeping one eye on Helo and Sharon, clocking that Racetrack hadn't moved and making sure that Sawyer and Sayid were still behaving like humans. Whatever that meant. Then he sighed as he watched the refugees pour out of the jungle onto the beach as if they were all on vacation.

He caught himself wishing that this was all some crazy dream and he was going to wake up right NOW in his bunk on Galactica - or even in the Brig, yeah, he'd take that too. Anything but this. And in the meantime he was hot and tired and even more confused than when he left Galactica. Did he really believe this was Earth? No. At least that was one certainty to pin his mind on. He looked across to Faraday who was sitting down now and at least had the good grace to look tired and hot. He was sitting a little ways away from Penny, careful not to get too close to her.

Faraday had been right about one thing - Starbuck and Boomer were both here, but no prizes for why he knew that. Now that Boomer had been outed as a Cylon, it wasn't hard to see how he'd come by that piece of information. All the Cylons probably had some mental link or something. Hell, maybe they were communicating even now, about to jump them all to some silent signal. He had no idea who to trust. No idea who was Cylon and who wasn't. Well, _he _wasn't, he knew that much, and he'd stake his life on the fact that Starbuck wasn't. And Helo? Jury out on that one. But for safety's sake he'd go for Cylon, along with Racetrack and now the Chief. This was crazy. He had to get a grip. Surely if everyone they knew was Cylon they'd be dead now? The Cylons weren't exactly good at restraining themselves from killing. But Boomer was a Cylon, her pregnant twin over there confirmed that, and maybe they were just holding back to get the bigger prize of Galactica and the fleet.

It was hot. Starbuck and the Chief had been gone over three hours, and the sun was high in the sky. He was being ignored by most of the beach camp survivors, almost as if they had no idea of the danger they were in. It unnerved him - and went a long way to convincing him that he'd landed in crazy central surrounded by happy, smiling Cylons. This was like some surreal Cylon paradise holiday camp. If this was a plan to lure the fleet here it was more than weird. What were these people doing, trying to convince him that this place was perfect to colonize? But then why was Faraday telling them all to go? It didn't add up.

He was letting his imagination get away from him. He had to stick to facts and take it from there.

He shook the sweat out of his eyes and shifted further into the meager shade offered by the tall tree. It was a species he didn't recognize, hell, all the trees and bushes here were species he didn't recognize. Not that that meant much. He'd been down on Kobol and hadn't recognized anything there either, but he couldn't remember whether they looked like this or not. Even so, chances were they were on Kobol, most likely surrounded by a whole cluster of Cylon Base Stars.

When Starbuck tried to make it back to Galactica in the Raider, what were the chances of her managing to evade the Cylon Base Stars lurking around the planet? He realized they had only gotten through the Cylon blockade because Faraday had steered them that way. And Faraday, no doubt in his mind: Cylon. Would they capture Starbuck? Probably. They were screwed.

There was a flash of movement to his right and then Chief Tyrol was striding out from the cover of the jungle, Starbuck close behind him. Apollo let out a small breath of relief. Starbuck's eyes flicked to his and then immediately over to the hulking shape of the Raider, her eyes widening with surprise when she caught sight of it. Yeah, she was with him. The chief, however, looked resigned and tired, nervous, like he had a lot to hide. Apollo felt his jaw clench, the anger and sense of betrayal immediately firing in his guts. He didn't move though, he kept his gun out, ready to shoot whoever made a stupid move. They were too pressed to care so much now about who was a civilian and who wasn't. He suspected no one was, though he didn't get the Cylon holiday camp. He didn't get any of it. Only that Sayid and Sawyer were there guarding the plane and now even that didn't make sense. He realized that Kate had gone. And the big guy, Hurley. He guessed they were at the medical station but he couldn't be sure. Couldn't be sure of anything. Starbuck stepped up beside him, the Chief now at the water container drinking thirstily.

'He's a Cylon,' she growled, glaring over at the Chief. 'And he's fixed the plane so he's the only one who can fly it.'

The Chief didn't say anything but ducked his head in something like... shame? Apollo gave him a slow appraisal. He'd known this guy since the Cylon attacks. The Chief had been a steady, hardworking presence on Galactica - had been pinned down and shot at on Kobol, the only mark against him had been his relationship with Boomer. Like Helo, that didn't necessarily make him a Cylon , and the guy was savvy enough in the tech department to learn fast. Maybe Boomer had taught him. 'How do you know he's a Cylon? Has he said anything?'

She shook her head, 'You just saw what he did - the raider is here, on the beach.'

Apollo was about to say something, question Starbuck some more when the Chief stepped forward. 'Sir,' he said earnestly, 'I can fix this. Let me take the Raider back to Galactica.' He hesitated, 'I'll get help.'

'Starbuck says you're a Cylon.'

'Look, it isn't like you think, I - I want to help.'

Faraday had stood and somehow landed up at his right elbow. Apollo immediately adjusted his position so that he still had the Chief, Apollo and the new girl Penny in his sights if he needed to, though he kept the rifle lowered. 'Look, I don't want to keep repeating myself,' Faraday said, stepping forward as Apollo leaned back, 'but there isn't time to stand around arguing. If you want to get back to your own time and place you need to leave very _very _soon. I've figured out the coordinates that will get you back with some time to spare - I think I've gained you a couple of days, but I didn't want to get too close to the timeline in case Desmond sheers against your trajectory - so the vectors had to have a small computational error built in-'

'What are they?' The chief was now totally focused on Faraday. 'Give me the numbers.'

Faraday looked at him curiously and the reeled off a series of numbers. The Chief nodded.

'And returning you'll need these -' Another series of numbers, this time in two sections. He recognized the first series, it was the vectors that Faraday had used to get them to their kick off point before they jumped here. The Chief nodded again.

'You want to write them down?'

The Chief shook his head, 'No, I got them.' Then he turned and strode toward the plane.

'Hey,' Starbuck stepped forward.

The Chief paused and turned, angling slightly so that he could see her properly. 'I can fix this,' he said again. 'Just let me go and I'll be back with help.'

'No.' She growled. 'I fly the plane.'

He shook his head and took a deep breath. 'It's programming has been changed.' He hesitated. 'Boomer - Lieutenant Valerii - she changed the programming. I can get the plane to let me in but you can't and the plane wouldn't let you fly.' He hesitated. 'It would kill you for trying,' he added.

Apollo frowned. Was he lying, covering his ass or what?

'So change the programming.' Starbuck was stepping forward now, squaring up to him.

'No.'

'So I shoot Boomer and then-'

'Look, I don't think I can. I don't have the tools here, I'd need to interface with a far more powerful computer and there isn't one. It just isn't possible. Besides, it would take time and we don't have-'

'So what makes you think _you _can fly the plane?'

Another pause, a long one this time. 'I can fly it.'

Starbuck, he could see was narrowing his eyes with suspicion.

'So what's to stop you from just taking off and then bringing all your Cylon friends back here.'

'You just need to trust me, Lieutenant. But the way I'm looking at it, you don't have a choice. Try and fly that plane and the way it's rigged right now it would kill you - send an electric current through its system that would blast you into black sludge. The plane was injured before and that's the only way you to got to fly it. Right now you wouldn't even get the hatch door open.'

'And you can.' Starbuck's didn't try to hide the sneer in her voice.

He shifted uncomfortably. 'Let me go and get help.'

'So what exactly did Boomer do to the plane?'

He sighed. 'She hit the reset button, that was all. Look, let me try this. I'll go to the Commander and get help. That's all.'

Apollo stood there. No way was he risking Starbuck in that plane. If what the Chief said was right, then the plane really wasn't safe for her to fly. He never liked the thought of her in that thing anyway. 'OK.' he said to the Chief. 'Try it.' He hesitated.

'I'm going with him.' Starbuck said determinedly, then turned to the Cheif. 'I'm guessing you can fix it so that I'm still alive at the end of it?'

The Chief took a deep breath, like he was steadying himself. Then he nodded once, gave Boomer a last, quick glance and then strode toward the plane. Starbuck gave Apollo a look, like she knew what he was thinking, like she knew he'd doubted her assessment of the Chief and the half smile said it all. She knew he'd been wrong. Then, before he could do or say anything in reply, she turned away and followed the Chief to the plane. Apollo ignored the tightening of his chest as she moved around to the opposite side of the plane, and ducked down out of sight. Apollo held his breath. This was a gamble, but the way he figured they had no choice.

Was this goodbye? Was this the last time he'd ever see her? He wanted to run after her, to shout, say something, stop this from happening so fast. Instead he tightened the grip on his rifle and stood his ground. Had they ever gotten over their fight? He'd been so mad at her when she'd shot that civilian. Still was, though his anger was evaporating fast now. And when Sawyer and Sayid stood back to give the plane room to take off, their eyes fixed on the spot where the Chief and Starbuck would be getting into the plane, he tried to think what he could have said or done to change all this. Starbuck didn't do easy goodbyes. Never had. It always felt this way so he shouldn't be surprised; awkward and painful, like something was being gouged out of him with a hook. He should have gotten used to it by now.

She was the bravest, stupidest person he'd ever met. Had he come all this way to find her only to watch her leave without a word of goodbye? Why did it always go like this? Why did he let it? Something in his guts lurched as he stood there, watching for the space behind the Raider that he couldn't see anymore, where he knew Starbuck was probably crawling inside. He didn't move.

It was official. He was the stupid one, not her.


	90. Flight Plan

Chapter 90

Flight Plan

The Chief lightly pressed his palm onto the panel and felt the familiar warm tingling as he made contact. There was a lag as the connection was made and authentication checks were carried out, then the familiar jolt inside him as his electrical systems merged with the plane. Inside his head he could see the scroll of numbers and possible command sequences as his identity was confirmed. So far so good. It only took a few seconds but it felt much longer; the plane was in high security mode, so everything that would normally have happened instantaneously was taking a lot longer. He could sense Starbuck standing beside him, Sawyer and Sayid a little way off, a dizzying disorientation from seeing in two realities at once; the sand and the sun through his normal vision and the wash of numbers and words inside his head.

Finally the hatch slid open, a silent shushing sound and a rush of stale air as it pushed its way out of the hatch. He took an involuntary step back, coughing and wrinkling his nose. He wasn't wrong when he'd said that the plane was injured; the smell was appalling. He turned his head, took a deep gasp of fresher air and then crawled inside, steeling himself for what he was going to find.

Starbuck had been standing silently at his shoulder, watching him like a hawk. She hadn't missed much, hadn't missed the position of the hand scanner and interface, hadn't missed how long it had taken him to get the door open, or his revulsion when he was met with what was inside the plane. He had no clue what she made of it, but she kept quiet, too silent and too alert. But he couldn't care about that right now; his whole focus had to be on the plane. As he crawled inside he could see how badly injured it was. Starbuck had cut it up pretty good when she'd captured it, and though parts had knitted together by themselves, it was messy and they were far from healed. The plane had been designed to conduct its own field repairs but these were supposed to be temporary, short term solutions to possible emergency situations, and a team of field surgeons was supposed to take over, sewing up the plane's delicate limbs properly.

He took a deep breath, crawling more slowly now, careful not to injure the plane any more. He squeezed over to his familiar spot, at the back, the little crawl space he'd designed for his testing. The tiny, hidden locker was still there, where he'd stashed his notes, his override controls, his sandwiches... he tapped gently on the invisible panel that opened the locker, watched as the membrane covering it drew back - like a muscle twitching - and reached inside. The compartment was empty. Of course it was. So this wasn't one of the planes he'd actually flown inside. It wasn't one of the original models he'd tested. He felt some strange, unformed disappointment at that. Like this wasn't the old, familiar friend he'd hoped. It would have been easier if this plane had known him directly, had experienced them flying together. He had no idea what data the planes shared now, how much Cavil had let slip through. Not much, by the look of it. The plane hadn't recognized him when he'd been working on it with Starbuck on Galactica. He just hoped his authorization would allow him to fly with it now.

Starbuck had crawled into the plane after him and had somehow managed to get her whole body inside, no doubt not trusting him to wait before he took off. It was a tight squeeze, though he was curled up at the back, making sure not to touch any of the delicate membranous parts of the plane. There was room next to him for one more person and he shifted over slightly. 'Here, sit here.' His voice sounded hoarse even to him. She eyed him carefully, her glance pausing at the opened locker, a frown on her face. Then she scrunched up her nose, took a deep breath of the foul smelling air, her way of committing herself to this particular quest, and then pulled herself in awkwardly beside him. He gestured for her to move over further to his left, nearest the door, while he shuffled over to the far right hand wall of the plane. There was another interface panel over on the side wall, a comfortable position for him to put his right hand out and interact with the plane. There was another on the other side, right next to Starbuck, but he wasn't going to tell her that and the thing was hidden enough that she shouldn't notice it. Maybe she'd figure it out. Either way, this is where Starbuck either shot him or shut up. And knowing her, it could go either way.

He sighed and steadied himself. This wasn't going to work.

He'd thought about taking her down before she even got inside the plane. He figured he could have kicked her away, dived inside and closed the hatch behind him, but that would have put Boomer and the other Eight at risk. Plus he had no idea what state the Raider was in and whether it was even capable of getting them back to Galactica and he'd look pretty dumb if he had to get out of the plane again and admit he wasn't going anywhere. So he'd taken a deep breath, let them both inside the plane and hoped that Starbuck wasn't planning on doing anything dramatic the moment the hatch was open. He knew she wanted to fly the plane, knew that she thought she could; she assumed she could hack away at the plane's insides with a knife like she had before and rig it up so that she could fly it. Of course she'd memorized the coordinates just like he had.

He let his hand still on the side of the plane, pausing before he made full contact. 'It wouldn't work you know.' He sensed her watching him. 'You wouldn't be able to rig up the plane like before. This time it would blow you apart when you tried. Or you'd injure it to the point where it couldn't fly. You got lucky last time.'

She didn't say anything, but he hoped it was enough to delay the inevitable for a while - at least until he'd figured out a new plan. No way could he seriously take her to Galactica. No way would she let that happen. Once the plane was flying she'd take him out and do it herself. Or let him get them there and then have security all over him. Either way it wasn't going to work. End result; he'd wind up in the nearest airlock once she'd told them all he was a Cylon.

He shut his eyes a moment and focused on the connectivity pad, running through the usual authentication steps to gain access to the plane's diagnostics.

'What are you doing?' Starbuck interrupted his thoughts, breaking his concentration. The connection fizzled and he sighed. The plane was having as much trouble with this as he was, it was still injured and, more frighteningly, its electrical circuitry was the primary system that was down.

'Pre-flight check,' he said as calmly as he could. 'The Electrical System is badly damaged, but I'm trying to see if the plane can make it through an FTL jump.'

She looked over at his hand, curiosity winning over sullenness.

'It's a simple hand pad,' he explained, 'Interfaces with the plane and allows me to diagnose its systems.'

'How?' she was frowning with suspicion now.

_Yeah. How? Because I'm a frakking Cylon, that's how. _He took a deep breath to calm himself. 'By merging our electrical fields. It creates a binary interface that allows me to check the plane's systems.'

'And Boomer taught you that?'

He paused. He'd assumed that she'd decided he was a Cylon. Was she having doubts? Did she imagine that Boomer had shown him how to do this? He almost laughed. Almost. And now what? He lied to her? Hoped they could make it to Galactica and through the paranoia that was Laura Roslin in time to get a rescue party back here? Allow him to try and find Cavil and deal with him, save everyone, including the Cylon race and make them all a big happy family?

Yeah that was the plan.

He didn't say anything, figuring no lies were better than trying to deceive her. But even so, his silence screamed too loud in the tight spaces of the ship.

He closed his eyes again and mentally searched the diagnostics section of the plane. _Environmental systems: Check. Flight controls: Check._ A few glitches where the plane's muscular internal controls were still merging, but they were strong enough to fly. _Power. Check._ Fuel was low, the plane could do with some more, but that could be taken care of on Galactica, there was still enough for several FTL jumps. _Combat systems. Check._ The new ammo was the wrong size and was causing irritation when the plane tried to fire. Something that probably saved the lives of everyone on the beach. And finally... _FTL and navigation. Check._ He breathed a sigh of relief. All systems go then. Now he had to get the plane to listen to him.

He could feel the plane's surprise when he connected; its wariness, then eagerness as he went through the familiar drill. He'd given some of the old ones names - daft, crazy names, like he'd give a dog or a cat. This one didn't have any leap of recognition, and he knew for certain that he hadn't flown it before. He felt its uncertainty, its questions. It was obviously a new plane, birthed after Cavil had wiped his memory and dumped him on Caprica, so it probably knew nothing of him or the others, and the fact that someone could crawl inside and access its most vulnerable systems was making it a little jumpy. He had to take this one slow and steady. Like training a puppy. Except he didn't have time and he was going to ask it to follow his lead when it had already taken a pounding and trust wasn't high on its list of successful strategies.

He sent the plane a few basic commands, asking it to run through its pre-flight checks, going through the list carefully to reassure the plane that this time outside interference would not mean pain and discomfort. He'd had to use his highest override to even get inside the plane, half expecting it to zap them both the minute they crawled inside. But somehow he must have managed to convince it that he was genuine because so far it had tolerated his presence. He'd worked on the plane on Galactica. He and Starbuck both had, together, for hours. Which was a good thing and a bad thing. Good because they weren't strangers, bad because they'd hurt it, or at least Starbuck had. But from her description of where she'd found the plane it had been injured enough that it wasn't flying so... he quickly accessed its records. Shot down, unable to fly. Then Starbuck had come along and got it flying. OK. Interesting.

It liked her.

The emotions he'd programmed into the planes were crude - on par with those of a domestic pet like a dog or cat. The planes had rudimentary opinions, feelings, likes and dislikes. Loyalty was one quality that he'd made a point of emphasizing. And this one had it in buckets. And strangely, Starbuck seemed to have gleaned more than a little loyalty and gratitude from the plane. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe the plane would have let Starbuck fly after all.

His latest half formed plan had been to fly out somewhere over the island and then dump her in the middle of the jungle. Which, the moment he actually took a second to examine it was a really dumb idea. Not least because she might get hurt, but also because she'd probably make it back to the beach camp before he did and then Boomer and the other number Eight would still be in trouble. Plus the plane might not play ball. He had to consider that one. He'd never tested the planes in this sort of situation before - where someone might ask it to do something that put another known and liked person in danger. Never thought he'd have to test a scenario like that and he had no idea how the plane would react.

And this definitely wasn't the time to test it out.

So... nothing else for it.

He sent over the coordinates Faraday had given him, checked the atmospheric controls, wrinkled his nose at the smell. He hadn't realized his injured planes smelled so bad. He'd have done something about that if he had.

'What are you doing?' Her voice was hoarse and still laced with suspicion.

'Getting the coordinates across to the plane.'

'You trust his numbers?'

'Well, Faraday got us here, so I figured he could get us back. And seeing as there isn't much else to go on...'

'There's some sort of force field. I saw the Raider bouncing off it when it took off from the beach without me.'

He frowned, trying to remember the details he'd seen from the transponder on Boomer's plane. He hadn't spotted a force field. He clicked into the scanner on the Raider and reviewed the files, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

'What is it?'

'A huge EM surge right as you jumped. Looks like you were catapulted right across space and... time.'

She gave a dry, bitter laugh.'Yeah. Right.'

'No, really, the readings are, well, they're...' his let his voice trail off, following the journey down from where Starbuck had jumped away from Galactica to where she'd landed up on a crash course with the Island. 'Smart move, taking the Raider underwater. That's what saved you.'

It was her turn to look surprised, then she recovered herself. 'You could have asked any of them on the beach and they'd have told you that.'

'Yeah, I could have, but I didn't.' He carried on reviewing the files. 'You were being pulled to the source of the EM surge, but it was erratic enough for you to have some control over the landing. No sign of a force field, but there is a sort of temporal barrier or something.'

'You're saying we can't get out?'

He shrugged. 'Guess we'll see if Faraday's figures add up and the only way that's going to happen is if we try them. You ready?'

She nodded over to him. 'You going to fly it from there?'

'There's a command pad here, I can order the plane from it.' He hesitated, but she didn't say anymore. He sat back and looked over at her. 'I'm not your enemy,' he said quietly.

'Right.'

'No, really.'

'So all Cylons are fluffy bunnies and-'

'I'm not saying that you don't have Cylon enemies. I'm just saying that I'm not one of them. Just... just trust me, OK?'

'This more mind games because-'

'I'm not playing games, Lieutenant. Look, we've worked together for over two years, have you ever had any reason not to trust me?'

She laughed and he realized how dumb that sounded. 'Well, finding out that Boomer was a Cylon and that Helo was frakking a pregnant Boomer Clone was sort a dark period in my relationship with my crew mates that's left me re-evaluating-'

'OK,' he put up a hand defensively. 'Let's just do this.' He pressed his hand more firmly to the pad and sent the command and the coordinates. There was a pause and then a jolt as the plane rose into the air. He could just see the blue and green of jungle and sky as they lifted off, flying directly up over the sea and then out toward the emptiness of space. He waited for the temporal barrier to push them back, surprised when it didn't and they slipped through to the dark of space. 'Get ready for the FTL jump,' he said gruffly, choosing not to notice that Starbuck's gun was now out and resting on her lap.

'Three, two, one._ Jump_.' He instinctively closed his eyes.


	91. Step Up, Step Down

Chapter 91

Step Up, Step Down

The Raider slid smoothly into Galactica's Port Landing Bay. The Chief glanced uneasily over at Starbuck. She was still hunched up next to him, gun on her lap. Outside the plane he could just hear the beeping of the lifts as the Raider was brought into one of Galactica's hanger decks. Not long now. The jump had taken them right into the middle of the fleet, a few clicks away from Galactica itself, and the Colonial tag he'd sent out had quickly diffused any potential problems. No direct com link - he hadn't had time to set that up - but he'd managed to identify the plane before the Commander had scrambled any vipers and blown them all to hell.

Starbuck hadn't said anything as they came out of the jump, just watched him, eyes never straying. She had shown no interest in where they were; they could have landed right in the middle of a Cylon Base Star for all she seemed to care. She was bluffing of course. She'd always been good at that, which was why she made a good triad player. Her next move remained a mystery to him. He hadn't sold them out- she must realize that by now. He'd gotten them here, to Galactica, not to some Cylon Base Star. Was that going to make a difference to her?

He felt the shuddering stop as the Raider was unhooked from the crane. So. They'd arrived. He had hoped for the chance to talk to Starbuck once they'd safely jumped away from that Island. He'd wanted to explain it all to her, somehow get her on his side, make her into an ally again. He also wanted to ask her what she thought was going on, to ask about the strange readings he'd picked up about EM wave on both Boomer's transponder and the data he'd read on the Raider. He'd hadn't said anything about it because she wasn't getting past the word _Cylon_. But he could have done with her input - he desperately needed time to figure out what it might be about. He was missing something, here, something big. An EM surge like that was way above any normal, background levels he'd expect to find. Was Cavil behind it? And if so, why? What was his plan?

Things were moving fast, too fast, and he didn't have enough information. Ideally he'd have taken the opportunity to talk to the one person who seemed to have any clue about what was going on - Daniel Faraday. Maybe he should have stayed back, waited, talked to him. But he'd been too eager to get to Cavil. It wasn't until the EM readings had been corroborated on the Raider that he'd really taken them seriously. Boomer's plane was badly damaged, and the transponder might have malfunctioned, but once he saw the readings from the Raider's sensor... But there hadn't been time. All he'd responded to was the sense of urgency, the need to find the Raider, the need to somehow get Starbuck away from Boomer and the other Eight and dispel the rising tension before someone else got hurt.

He could see now that his eagerness to get back to the fleet and deal with Cavil had clouded his judgement. He'd acted too quickly. He should have taken the time to talk to Faraday, to at least try and understand what this was all about. But it was done now and they were finally here. He chanced another uneasy glance across to where Starbuck was still hunched over at the back of the plane, waiting. Neither of them said anything. What was there to say? She'd do whatever she was going to do and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

His mouth was dry as he pressed on the panel and ordered the plane to open the hatch door. It slid open immediately, the familiar scents of the hanger deck buffeting him, making him sway with the shock of memories, with the familiar _rightness _of being there. This was his home. Correction. This had been his home. For a while. A deep breath, another chanced glance at Starbuck, still unmoving, waiting for him to get out first. Deep breath. _Here goes nothing_.

He slid out onto the deck feet first, having to duck down to get his upper torso out of the low hatch. As he straightened up he heard the ominous click of weaponry. He squinted in the brightness of the hanger deck lights.

'Chief?' it was Adama's voice, laced with surprise. 'Stand down!' his voice rang out around the circle of marines. The Chief took a deep breath as the guns were lowered. Adama stepped toward him and clasped him on the shoulder, already looking behind him, the hope there in his expression. His eyes widened as he fixed on Starbuck's boots, legs, gun and then the rest of her as she slithered out of the plane. 'Kara!' Another step forward, past him, as Adama moved to greet her. But she neatly sidestepped him, moving to his right, avoiding the Commander's attempted greeting to stand by the Chief's side, her sidearm raised, pointing to his head. The Chief took a long, slow breath and tried not to close his eyes.

'Starbuck? What's going on?'

'He's a Cylon.' She said in a low growl.

Ah well, so much for his hope that she would play along.

00000

Sawyer stood looking at the place where the plane had disappeared. It had taken off smooth as silk, eerily quiet, a slight _pufft _sound, like the brakes on a truck, easing out over the sea and then up, up, right into the sky at a speed that shouldn't be possible. And then it had simply... disappeared. Gone.

Sayid was standing next to him, but he wasn't looking up. Had it seen it? Had anyone bothered to look at the plane, like _really_ look at the plane? Juliet would have noticed. She would have seen the way it had just disappeared into thin air. He felt his stomach tighten. He'd spent the last while guarding the plane because no one else had looked like they were going to do it - except Sayid. And he didn't trust Sayid. Before the plane had showed up he'd been intending to go to the medical station, find Juliet and-

'I don't trust them,' Sayid growled.

Sawyer snapped his gaze away from the empty sky and turned to where Sayid was glaring at Apollo and his prisoners. For once Sawyer agreed with him. The plane was supposed to go and bring help, but help from where? From outer space? From some time zone he hadn't even heard of? And what kind of help? More people who thought everyone around them was a freaking robot? He shook his head. If he weren't living it then he wouldn't be believing it. He sure wasn't feeling it, wasn't feeling much now but a kind of numb ability to believe anything that walked passed him asking to be real. If Mickey Mouse turned up right there in front of him he'd just go right on and shake him by the hand, get Rose to give him some food and welcome him right in.

He sighed, put the gun into the back of his pants and walked slowly toward where Apollo was standing over Faraday and the new girl. Helo was in the shelter with Sharon a little ways off. Sawyer had ditched his plan to talk to Helo - couldn't see how it would help. It didn't seem to matter that much now. The plane had gone to get help and he was done with trying to figure it all out. There wasn't anything he could do in any case, so what was the point?

He stared out over the camp. He had been intending to go to the medical station, find Juliet, talk to her, make it right. But Jack was there. He'd seen the way Jack looked at Juliet, seen the way she responded to him. They were doctors, they seemed to like each other and Jack wasn't poor white trash. Something inside of him twisted bitterly. Sure, he still wanted to see her. A lot. But not when Jack was hanging around. Besides, if Juliet wanted to, she could have come by and found him by now. But she hadn't. Guess that was his answer.

He made his way slowly to his old shelter, pulled open his hidey-hole in the floor and grabbed the nearest paperback. The old seat he'd salvaged from original crashed plane was lying a little ways off on its side; must have been knocked over in all the confusion. He righted it, brushed off the sand and settled it against a tree, taking the gun out and laying it carefully by his side where he could reach it in a hurry. Then he sat back and started to read. The world was just going to have to turn without him for a while.

00000

Adama stood outside the bars of the cage, his legs planted firmly apart as if he were standing on the deck of a sailing ship on a rough sea. Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol sat at the back of the cell, head bowed, knees to his chest. Adama looked down at the man, ten feet and the bars of the cage between them. But more than that, there was an ocean of distance there now, a massive expanse that he couldn't even think to cross. The Chief had betrayed them. One of his crew. He could never get used to that.

According to Starbuck it wasn't just Chief Tyrol, it was Boomer and Racetrack - and that was before her report of how Helo had wound up on Kobol too, along with a pregnant Boomer-clone carrying his child and- Adama swayed slightly, rocking in the face of information that threatened to drop him to his knees. He took a slow, even breath, steadying himself, concentrating. He hadn't gotten this far by going down so easily. Apollo was alive. That was the main thing. He had to hold onto that, if nothing else.

From Starbuck's rushed and breathless report, Apollo was being held by a group of human-looking Cylons who were planning to lure the fleet into a trap. And trap or no trap, she still wanted to go there with a task force large enough to hit the Cylons hard, then break Apollo out of there and run.

Starbuck was full of it. Adama couldn't decide which was hardest to believe - that Starbuck was telling the truth or that she was lying. Maybe it was this Starbuck he should be wary of. What if the real Starbuck had somehow been cloned into a Cylon and the Chief was innocent? He'd known the Chief for years, it seemed crazy that he would turn out to be a Cylon.

But he'd known Starbuck for longer. How could either of them suddenly turn out to be Cylons? It looked like one of them was. How in hell was he supposed to choose between them?

From what Starbuck was saying, it looked like the Cylons had the capability to make copies of them all. Maybe he wasn't supposed to choose - maybe Starbuck and the Chief were both Cylons. In which case they were all completely screwed, because that meant that any crew member who had ever been on a mission could have captured, cloned and then switched. And if Apollo really was down on Kobol, he had to ask the question; was he real or a Cylon copy as well?

Adama felt the world sway a little more.

It was all falling apart. Had the Cylons really infiltrated this deeply into their ranks?

The Chief looked up. He must have heard them come in, must have heard the shuffle of the guards, the click as their rifles aimed at his head, then the long, slow silence of Adama's thouhts. And now, nearly a minute later, he chooses to acknowledge him. It was all so theatrical.

The Chief looked down again, drawing in a deep breath before standing slowly, fainlly meeting Adama's eyes as he prepared to speak. The rifles from the marines followed his movement. 'Commander, I-' The Chief paused and then his gaze flicked to where the XO stood at Adama's shoulder. 'Saul,' he said, so softly that Adama could barely make out the word. Adama felt Tigh stiffen beside him, but his XO didn't say anything. Saul was a few things, but he wasn't about to let a prisoner frack with his head so easily.

Adama waited for the Chief's attention to return to him. The man looked tired, conflicted, almost contrite. Adama watched him for a moment, then straightened. 'You took my son,' he said simply, bitterly.

Another long pause before the Chief spoke. 'I think- I mean I _don't_ think that the Cylons took Apollo. I think this is something separate, but I can't be sure until-'

'Starbuck says you have admitted to being a Cylon.' Adama watched the man's eyes. He had thought that maybe, _maybe_ the Chief was covering for Lieutenant Valerii, though he couldn't see how claiming that he was a Cylon himself could help her in any way.

The Chief licked his lips in one nervous, quick movement. 'It's not like you think, it's-'

'So you _are _a Cylon?'

'Look, I can help, sir, I-' The Chief swallowed hard. Adama waited. He hadn't answered the question and they both knew what that meant. Adama's eyes narrowed in disgust as one of his crew, a man he had trusted, stood there spinning more lies and betrayal.

'Why are you holding my son?'

'I'm not, I-'

'It's a trap, isn't it?'

'Maybe. Look, I'm not sure myself what is going on - but yeah, it could be a trap. Could be they're trying to use him as bait.'

'_They_? So you're saying you're not a Cylon?'

Another pause that went on too long. 'There was an EM surge, a huge one, and it's been pulling your ships out of space/time-' Adama heard the Chief's voice trail off as Adama turned away in disgust. He couldn't look at him anymore, couldn't hear any more. He turned his back on the man and walked stiffly out of the Brig.

'What are you going to do?' Tigh murmured quietly as he stepped through the hatch door behind him.

'I'm going after my son.'

A grunt of acknowledgement. 'And what are you going to do with _him_?' Tigh gestured back toward the cell.

'I'll let you decide that.'

Tigh raised his eyebrows in surprise.

'Only don't kill him. I don't want him downloading and giving our position away. I'm leaving you in charge of Galactica and the fleet while I'm gone.'

'What?'

'I'll take a Raptor. Starbuck has volunteered. We'll go get him out of there.'

'Just the two of you?'

'Just the two of us.'

'But-'

Tigh's words were swept away as Adama strode toward the hanger deck. Was he really going to do this? Was he really acting on some snap decision he'd just made in there? He searched inside himself, trying to find an anchor for his thoughts. His whole body was straining for action, straining to do something, to get out there, _make_ it happen. He'd been a commander for so long, spent so long watching others fight and die, always forced into the inaction of waiting. But not this time. It was his _son_ out there and he was done with waiting.

Was it suicide? Probably. It was certainly stupid, irresponsible. He shouldn't be doing this. But it was Apollo, and that leant a startling clarity to his thoughts. This was just something he had to do.

'Bill!' He swung to find Laura moving quickly to intercept him, looking dishevelled like she'd just woken up, her eyes wide in surprise. 'What's going on?'

'Starbuck's back.'

'The arrow?' she said immediately, falling into step beside him.

He could have laughed. Her and that godsdamn arrow. 'No arrow. She got no farther than Kobol. I'm going down there.'

'_What_? Why?'

'They've got Apollo. I'm going to get him out.'

'He's on Kobol?'

'Look, there's no time to explain, I'll-'

'But Kobol was swarming with Cylons? This is crazy!'

'Starbuck has a plan, she says she can get us in and out without the rest of the Cylon forces detecting it,' It was downright lie, but he didn't have time to do this. He stepped up the pace a little. Every second delay now was a second that Apollo might need. He pulled a little away from her.

'Wait!' she pulled on his arm, slowing him again,' you're really leaving the fleet?' Her look was incredulous.

He set his jaw. 'I'll be back.'

He could see her mind desperately scrabbling around trying to figure out what was going on. He hadn't told her squat, hadn't let her in on Starbuck's report, or the fact that Chief Tyrol was probably a Cylon. He'd purposefully kept her out of the loop. Why? Because she'd try to talk him out of it, and he didn't have _time_ to go through the motions of arguing with her. Lee needed him and the one constant in all of this was that his son's time was running out. He turned away and kept on walking, purposefully not looking back.

He swung around the final turn and stepped into the brighter lights of the hanger deck, moving quickly towards the lockers where he grabbed the nearest flying suit that would fit him and started pulling it on. Starbuck was already suited up waiting quietly for him beside the Raptor. He didn't bother to look up to where Laura standing there by the door; he didn't need to. He knew she was there, could feel her presence, the heavy weight of her disapproval, her panic, the jumble of emotions that all added up to an attempt to try and stop him. Well, not this time. He could see her prepping her argument, getting ready to speak when he grabbed a helmet off of the shelf and pushed past her.

Then stopped. Who was he trying to kid? They both knew that this was probably going to be a one way mission. Had he really been about to skulk away from her like a coward? He sighed. He owed her more than that. He turned slowly to face her.

'You're not coming back, are you?' she asked bluntly.

He took a deep, controlled breath. 'I don't know.'

She took one step toward him, her face right up to his. 'Don't be a fool,' she hissed. 'You're sacrificing everything - maybe even the fleet-'

He pulled away, opened his mouth to say something and then shook his head. Starbuck was standing awkwardly by the Raptor at the corner of his vision. 'I'm sorry.' He finally said, the words coming out as barely a whispered croak.

'That's it?' she threw back. 'You're _sorry_?' Her eyes were boring into him, digging into his core, accusing him. 'This is insane! You can't do this. You can't risk everything for-'

He turned away, cutting her off mid-sentence and walking wearily up the ramp and into the Raptor. He took the pilot's seat as Starbuck stepped in behind him, business like, efficient, pulling him back to his training and away from the energy drain of trying to deal with his emotions around Laura Roslin. 'They'll be fine,' he muttered to himself, knowing damn well that they probably wouldn't be. She was right, of cause, he was a fool. An old, insane fool. But he wasn't leaving his son to die. Period.


	92. Counterpoint

Chapter 92

Counterpoint

Penny slumped back against the trunk of the tree and closed her eyes. This wasn't going the way she had thought it would. Not that she'd had a clear idea of what she'd thought was going to happen - Eloise Hawking was always maddeningly vague when it came to details - but whatever she had expected, _this_ hadn't been it. Daniel sat quietly next to her, a stranger now that his wits had returned. He genuinely appeared to have no memory of her at all and only the vaguest recollection of the last six years. And then there was Apollo, the man Desmond had spoken about. _Lee_. Apollo was his call sign. And yes, she remembered every word of the conversation she'd had with Desmond six years ago. She'd clung onto it, going over and over his words, his tone, the way he looked at her, the uncertainty in his eyes, the haircut, that dreadful beard. And now here she was and Desmond was nowhere to be seen. No, things weren't going the way she'd hoped at all. A deep wave of anxious despair washed over her. She didn't want to be here. This wasn't working. At all. None of these people had any idea where to find Desmond, Daniel didn't know her anymore and Apollo wasn't the friendly savior but some thug with a gun and a hard expression who terrified her beyond belief.

She shifted uncomfortably, feeling the sharp edges of Daniel's journal as it rubbed uncomfortably against the skin under her shirt, the laminated pages rough and unyielding. She hadn't given the journal to Daniel or spoken to him about it, hadn't dared do anything except nod and walk and sit and shut up. No one had pointed a gun at her before and she wasn't taking it very well. If she'd known what all this was going to be like she would never have agreed to this insanity. What was she doing here? What had Eloise been _thinking_ by sending her here? Of course she knew what Eloise had _wanted _- Eloise was determined to try to make things happen differently, and had sent Penny into this mess for no better reason than because Penny hadn't been there _before_ - when Daniel had died - when Eloise had shot him.

Eloise still had the original journal, of course, the one that Daniel had written the first time around. Penny had hardly seen any of it because Eloise had kept it close to her like a poisonous, guarded secret, terrified that any contact with it would spread its destructive power. So of course Penny's knowledge of it was vague. She'd tried to argue that she should have that one as well - that it would give her a point of comparison. But no, Eloise had kept the old diary and sent Penny in like a blind fool. Stupid, really. But then Eloise had never struck her as a particularly intelligent woman. Obsessed, determined and ruthless, yes, but her grasp of reality was painfully incomplete. Coupled with her almost cavalier regard for anyone else's life but Daniel's, it made for a dangerous combination. And Penny was here because of her. Well, no, Penny was here because Richard Alpert had turned up and told to be here for Desmond. Who was nowhere to be seen.

Penny nervously glanced over to where Apollo was standing, jaw tensing in an uneven beat on the side of his face. He was frowning, the anger still pouring off of him, and she had no idea why. She didn't understand what was going on, didn't understand who these people were and what they were trying to achieve. Were they really from another time? How could that possibly be true - and how could it be true that all this had already happened, that these people on the beach had already been here, done all this, lived through this day, felt this sunlight on their skin? It didn't seem possible. It all felt so real and so... _new_. It didn't feel like she was recycling something that had happened already. But then how else was it supposed to feel? However 'new' it all felt, surely her subjective experience was no indicator that it wasn't all happening the same way. According to Eloise, the only sure way of knowing was to test the memories the woman had of her own past - her memory of shooting Daniel. But then why wasn't Eloise herself here? Why had the old bat stayed behind and sent Penny instead?

Penny found the unease rising from her gut. Maybe Eloise had some horrible ulterior motive that Penny didn't know about. The woman had grown up on this Island, had connections with Penny's father that made any of her actions dubious by association. What if Eloise was playing her? Well, of course Eloise was playing her, over the last six years Penny had come to the reluctant conclusion that the woman was totally ruthless, utterly lacking in morals and anything resembling personal integrity. She would do anything to get what she wanted, not matter who was crushed or broken in the process. Penny shuddered. Being manipulated into going to this island had been a mistake. But then if Desmond hadn't shown up from the future - proving beyond doubt that that was who he was - and if Richard Alpert hadn't come along as well...

Penny ran a hand over her forehead. This was making her head hurt.

Penny knew that Apollo and the gun hadn't been part of all this the first time around. But Eloise said that as long as her own memories of shooting Daniel were intact then everything was going to play out the way it had the last time and Daniel was still going to end up dead. Somehow. Maybe not the same way, but if Daniel's theory of time and space were correct then his death was inevitable, even though the way it happened might change.

Had Desmond ended up dead as well? She had asked that once, and Eloise had said that she didn't know. Maybe. Probably. Penny hadn't known whether or not to believe the woman, whether she was simply trying to manipulate her into caring, into trying to save Desmond too. As if she didn't care enough already, as if Daniel being her brother wasn't enough.

Where was Desmond? Was he still alive? What if things changed for the better for Daniel but at the cost of everyone else ending up dead? What if Daniel survived and Desmond didn't? Or what if _she _died in all of this? _Whatever happened happened_. Apparently that had been Daniel's mantra, his take on the way time worked; once a series of events were done and gone that was it, they were fixed and immobile. But if Eloise believed _that _Penny wouldn't be here, would she? But who was the better temporal physicist, Eloise or Daniel?

She sighed and leaned her head against the tree, letting it thud slightly as it made contact, making her wince.

'Are you all right, sister?' Daniel's voice made her snap her eyes back open. 'I can ask for a drink of water...'

Penny gave him a wan smile. _Sister._ 'My name's Penny.' she said softly.

'Oh.' he looked embarrassed. 'Right.' He gave a half laugh. 'It's all so confusing nowadays, isn't it? Vatican II and all that.'

She frowned at him. '_Vatican II_?'

'I tried to send them back in time,' he continued conversationally, ignoring her query and raising his voice so that it traveled past her to Apollo, '...that way it might buy us some more time before the hole closes up, but I'm not sure if I got it right, and until I have a chance to do a few readings to calibrate...' his voice trailed off when he saw that Apollo wasn't really listening. Penny sat awkwardly between them, the words making her even more invisible. She looked up at Apollo. He didn't look like an alien. Penny remembered having conversations with Eloise about who and what the people in the space ship might be. Eloise thought they were from a technologically proficient time in the not so distant future. Now that she'd met them Penny was inclined to agree. Apollo certainly wasn't an alien - on the contrary, this man would have fitted right in anywhere in the Western world.

She sighed and pushed back further against the tree, closing her eyes against the glare of the sun. She had no idea what she was supposed to be doing, she wasn't even sure what her presence was supposed to achieve if her only contribution was to sit silent, held captive while some spaceman from the future threatened her with a gun. Maybe if Desmond had been here she would have felt a little less alone. Even Daniel was a stranger now. It was selfish, but part of her missed the familiarity of the old, damaged Daniel. Not that she wasn't glad his mind had healed. It was a miracle and she was amazed and relieved and awed by it, but it had happened so suddenly, so completely, and she had been locked out of his life so effectively that it was hard to find the connection between the Daniel she knew and this one sitting beside her. It wasn't that she wanted him hurt again, that wasn't it. It was just that she had no more access to him now than when he was rambling on her sofa watching the TV and eating the toast he'd burnt in her kitchen.

The sun was bright. Too bright. A huge change from the leaden skies over London at this time of year. Suddenly she missed Desmond with an ache that spread through her chest and made the back of her eyes prickle in pain. She was so tired and scared and confused and that bitch Eloise hadn't told her the half of it. She took in a deep breath, trying to ignore the rush of panic. She put an arm over her face, shielding her eyes. Even with her eyes closed the sun was too bright.

00000

The sun was bright, high in the sky already, reflecting off the leaves so that it hurt his eyes. Desmond looked up and squinted through the canopy. What time was it? Mid morning?

Locke had still not returned and the blonde haired woman was sitting patiently, waiting.

Locke had ostensibly gone to find them some food, but Desmond wondered if he had simply abandoned them and gone on ahead, leaving them here so that he could get back to his camp unencumbered. Locke had been gone hours. The blonde woman sat, silent and uncomplaining, barely moving, the shifting shadows tracking a path across her body. She looked like she was in some kind of trance. Desmond stared up at the sun one more time. They were losing precious daylight. Perhaps they should give up on Locke, head South without him, get back to the place where the plane crash survivors had made their camp. Maybe he'd find his boat, try to get away again. How far was it? A day's walk? More? His stomach growled in protest and he grimaced. He'd let the fire go out. It was too hot for a fire in any case, but Locke had insisted on one and keeping it going through the night, presumably to deter wild animals. That was once they'd realized they weren't going to be walking anywhere, not once the blonde woman had fallen over unconscious. She'd collapsed only five minutes after they'd arrived, just like that, out for the count, then slept for the next ten hours straight, waking only in the pre-dawn light looking groggy and disorientated. Just like Locke had. Just like him too, when he'd first arrived on that... space ship. He'd waited to see if Locke had been going to pass out again too, but he hadn't, instead Locke had methodically gone about making a shelter and building a small fire, keeping his voice low and moving carefully as if he'd expected wild animals or savages to leap out of the jungle and attack them.

With the fire lit and the woman unconscious, Desmond had fallen asleep, waking only when Locke had shaken him and told him to watch the woman while he went to get some food. Hours ago.

Desmond shifted around into a new patch of shade. The heat of the sun on his back had become uncomfortable. He wasn't familiar with this part of the island, wasn't used to having to map the hours using the sun, wasn't used to anything anymore. The woman's red dress looked like some huge, shiny berry, stark against the green of the trees. So much for blending in. He watched her a moment. She hadn't moved in a long time. Was she meditating? She looked very peaceful, almost serene, incongruous in the middle of the jungle in her red party dress and high heels.

'What?' she asked suddenly, making him jump in surprise. Her eyes had snapped open and landed on him.

He startled, winced and then gave her a sort of half smile. 'Locke isn't back yet.' was all he could think of to say. His voice sounded rough, hoarse, unused. He cleared his throat and looked away.

'Do you understand what happened?' she asked.

He shook his head. 'We're on the Island. We _were _in space.'

'Space?'

'On a space ship. And there are two of me. I'm in Glasgow as well.' He gave a half laugh and shook his head, staring down at the ground. When he glanced back up to see her reaction she was frowning, but she didn't say any more, instead she took in this piece of information and then went back to her meditation, leaving him sitting awkwardly and feeling like a fool.

After what seemed like an age he pulled out the words and spoke again. 'Maybe we should go?'

Her eyes opened slowly and she coolly regarded him. 'Go where?'

'To the camp. On the South of the Island. I don't think he's coming back.'

She put her head to one side, thinking, then uncurled herself from where she was sitting and with an almost feline grace and stood up, smoothing her skirt. 'Very well.'

He scrambled to his feet and stood awkwardly. He was hungry and light-headed. He hesitated, wondering if they should wait after all. Locke had ostensibly gone to find some food, maybe he was just being slow in finding something. But now the woman had already started walking so he took a deep breath and shambled behind her.

They'd been going about ten minutes, the woman in front of him moving with long, languid strides, strolling along like she was out in the park for a morning's walk. The high heels didn't seem to slow her down or hamper her movement at all. It was like following a model down a cat walk, not slogging through a ragged jungle on uneven ground. How long to the camp? Would they get there before sunset? He was hungry. Really hungry. Maybe there'd be fruit on the some of the trees, Mango or something like that and he'd finally get to-

Suddenly, without warning, the woman turned and grabbed him, pulling him down roughly by one arm and clamping a hand over his mouth. He froze, but allowed himself to be dragged into the undergrowth, eyes wide, the breath hitching in his throat. He held his breath, going completely still. When she felt his muscles soften, she released her grip on his mouth and arm, meeting his eyes and then nodding over to a place further down the trail. He squinted into the shadows about twenty yards away, seeing nothing at first and then the flash of movement. Two men, dressed in dark brown clothing stepped out from the shadows. They both had bare feet, walking softly and silently, their feet making no sound on the forest floor. He let his gaze rove over them and then behind, automatically looking to see if there were more of them. He stiffened as he caught the gleam of blades in the men's hands. They both held long, vicious looking knives and both had a rifle slung over their back. The men moved closer. Desmond automatically crouched a little lower in the undergrowth. He could see a dirt covered ankle moving toward their hiding place. That was when the woman next to him stood up.

'Are you looking for me, gentlemen?' she asked quietly. The first man didn't pause, didn't miss a beat, instead he lunged, the long knife extending his reach by at least a foot. Desmond gasped and rolled to his right, coming up in time to see the red blur of the woman's movement as she swiftly kicked the knife out of the man's grip, then followed the twisting movement by spinning her body, grasping the man's neck in a scissor motion with both legs and snapping her legs sharply. There was a crack and they both fell to the floor, the man's body limp. Desmond came slowly to his feet. The second attacker had paused in horror and then begun fumbling with the rifle, still strapped to his back. He'd dropped the knife. The red dress moved again in a blur and the woman stood up and then moved so fast he couldn't see her for the blur of red movement. Then the man was being picked up and hurled twenty feet, flying solidly through the air and hitting the trunk of a tree with a sickening thud. He slid down, winded, watching in alarm. The woman stalked slowly towards him, grabbing his head between her hands and twisting hard. There was another sickening crack. Desmond winced and looked away. He felt sickened. When he looked back up at her she was examining him with a curious expression.

'They were going to kill us,' she said simply. She bent down and took the gun from the man's back, then picked up the knife from the ground where he had dropped it. She did the same with the second body, picking up both gun and knife, pulling the belt and sheaf off of the body and tying it quickly around her own waist. She sheaved both knives and slipped one of the rifles across her back, leaving the other in her hand. Then she turned to him, both sets of weapons now efficiently attached to her. He stood unarmed, his hands hanging uselessly by his side. She cocked her head to one side, examining him with a cold, hard stare. He felt a sudden rush of dread; he wanted to clear his throat, look away, do anything, but he stood staring back. 'You knew these men?' she asked finally.

He shook his head once, the numbness creeping over him, cold and hard.

She waited a moment and then seemed to come to some sort of decision. 'I think we should keep going.' she said. 'There might be more of them.' Without waiting for him to respond, she strode past him and continued on their trail South. He stood for a moment, trying not to look at the bodies of the two men. He was shaking. She had almost killed him as well. He knew that. His knees felt weak and a wave of shocked nausea brought the bile up into his throat. He swallowed it back down, then he turned, hesitating, his eyes following the sight of the red dress as it disappeared through the trees. Then he looked back at the two bodies and the place where the two men had appeared like ghosts from the jungle behind him. Which way? Another sigh and he forced his body into motion and followed the woman in the red dress.


	93. Rush

Chapter 93

Rush

Starbuck watched from the back of the Raptor as the Old Man deftly guided the plane toward the planet's surface. They hadn't spoken much. He'd tapped in the coordinates she'd given him and gone over the plan briefly and succinctly. She could tell he was still pissed at the way she'd taken the Cylon Raider and followed the President's plan to try and return to Caprica to find the arrow of Athena. He hadn't talked about it but she knew it was bugging him. He didn't like what she'd done or the way she'd done it, she knew that. Things just weren't the same between them now. The trust had gone. But it worked both ways - she'd had to get used to the way he'd lied about Earth and he'd just have to suck up the fact that he didn't know everything and he wasn't always right. He was at least talking to her now. Even if it had only been to agree that they go in as fast as they could, grab Apollo, act all armed and dangerous and then get the hell out. OK, as plans went it was pretty vague, but this wasn't the sort of situation that responded readily to complexity. The plan was simple and, well, that gave it flexibility. OK, so it was dumb. The whole thing was dumb. They were both being stupid and letting their feelings get in the way of anything else. Well, at least they had that in common.

She checked the board at the ECO station in front of her. The jump had completed OK, everything looked fine. Her job was done. She didn't know how Helo did this all the time, stuck at the back of the Raptor tapping in numbers, not being able to see where they were going properly. She turned her head to look out of the cockpit at the front of the plane. Adama's suit was a solid block of brown in the pilot's seat , masking her view out front. From the way he held himself, back straight in concentration, he looked firmly in control. That was good. He'd always been a good pilot. She was better, of course, but... she blinked as the Raptor began to bank down. She tensed, trying to discern any sign of the pull that had dragged the Raider and the other Raptors so dangerously down to the planet surface before. So far everything seemed OK, the Raptor seemed to be responding normally to the Old Man's commands. The gentle tilt continued, the Commander following the line of the coast. As the plane pulled around harder, she could see the beach, slanted away from them at an angle, and the camp just coming into view. They would have to turn awkwardly to land at the first pass and it looked like that was what he was going to do. She agreed. The landing would be awkward, but a second pass, though it would line them up better, would mean flying over the camp, giving too much of a tempting target to start firing at.

She thought about moving up beside him, getting a good look at what was going on at the camp. She wanted to know what they were facing as they landed. But if they needed to jump out of there fast she'd be more use at the ECO controls at the back of the Raptor. But she hated being out of the cockpit and besides, this had always looked like a one way trip, she for one wasn't going to leave without Apollo, and she was pretty sure that the Old Man felt the same way. With a grunt she got up and started making her way toward the front of the plane.

She had about two seconds to figure out what was happening, and less than that to leap in and take the controls when the Commander's head dropped down and he collapsed, suddenly and magnificently slumping down over the console, causing the Raptor to accelerate suddenly and start slewing violently to one side, veering sharply toward the approaching jungle and trees. She dived for the co-pilot's chair, ramming her hand hard on the panel to switch control away from the Commander's side. The Raptor was designed for just such a scenario - losing one pilot and having to swap in another - but not when it was barely fifty feet from the ground. The plane tipped awkwardly, banking to the right and then losing height suddenly. The Old Man had collapsed onto the instrument panel, driving the stick down and pointing the Raptor's nose right down to the ground. The crash happened in under a second, one moment airborne, the next driven hard toward a group of trees.

'Dammit!' she swore between gritted teeth, wincing as she jabbed onto the reverse thrust, pulling the raptor round hard so that it scraped hard along the edge of the jungle, trying to force the raptor parallel to the line of trees and shrubs, not right into it. No way was she letting this one get damaged. _No frakking way._ There was a terrible tearing sound as the Raptor scraped alongside branches and the smaller trees that were creeping up the sand dunes skirting the beach. The camp was rearing up in front of her, if the Raptor didn't stop right away it would plough straight through the homes and shelters. There was no time to think, no time to figure out whether or not the so-called people on the beach were really Cylons. She swore again and pulled the Raptor round, pointing back toward the jungle, wincing at the sound of crushing metal as she forced the plane into the line of trees and waited for it to slide into a sudden halt.

There was grinding sound, a loud _whump_, and she was jerked roughly sideways, more scraping sounds and then nothing. Like a breath exhaling the raptor settled into a cradle of trees and branches. She looked back to see where a thick branch had pushed the skin inwards over the ECO station, making a sizeable dent in the side of the plane and crushing the equipment underneath. It didn't take a genius to see that the jump drive was fried.

_Unbelievable. Un-frakking-believable._

She sat back, letting her head bang on the pilot's rest behind her. She allowed herself a second of frustrated despair, consoling herself that at least she was still alive, before she remembered that the Old Man was slumped over his console. She leant over to check on him. He was breathing OK, his pulse was fine. It was like he was simply... asleep. _Deeply _asleep. She shouldn't have let the Old Man fly the plane. She should have realized. She should have made the connection;_ she'd_ passed out the moment she'd landed, but at the time had figured that it was due to the crash, though Apollo had said the same had happened to him and the Chief. And of course to the Cylons that had appeared on Galactica. But she wasn't a Cylon, and hopefully neither was Apollo. Wasn't it only Cylons that did that? She sighed and powered down the plane, flinching at the unhealthy hissing noise coming from somewhere in the undercarriage. Not a good sound. And no Chief here to fix it. She punched the door control open, breathing out reflexively as a waft of hot air moved quickly into the cabin.

'Starbuck?' She glanced over her shoulder, Helo was hovering in the doorway, looking anxious and wary in equal measure. He took in the scene in front of him and then stepped quickly over to the cockpit, looming over the Old Man, his face full of concern.

'He's fine,' she sighed. 'Just passed out.'

Helo looked around the Raptor. 'Not quite the rescue you'd planned, then,' he said dryly, making no effort to hide his amusement.

'Yeah. Thanks for that.'

He glanced down at the panel behind him. 'The Jump Drive is screwed.'

She sighed.

'Starbuck!' She turned to find Apollo making his way up the ramp. His eyes took in the sight of the damaged Raptor and then homed in on his father's prostrate form. 'Dad?' He swept down, pushing past them to get to Adama. 'Is he OK?'

'I think so, he passed out. I-' Starbuck took another deep breath, closing her eyes in frustration. 'Let's just get him out.'

'You crashed.' Daniel Faraday's voice floated up from where he was standing at the bottom of the ramp. She gritted her teeth, ignoring it. There was a pause as they dragged Adama out past him. 'Oh, he's unconscious. The usual Reboot,' he said vaguely. 'I though the coordinates I'd given you would have made that obsolete. Guess I got that wrong.'

Starbuck concentrated on getting the dead weight of the Commander down the ramp to the beach.

'Where's the chief?' Apollo asked, looking around.

'Locked up,' she said calmly. 'Under the charge of the XO.'

Apollo swore softly under his breath. 'So we're right back where we started.'

She grimaced, looking over at the plane. 'You think you can fix this?' she asked Helo.

He let out a breath and then shrugged. 'Looks pretty banged up. I don't know. Maybe.'

00000

Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol sat slumped at the back of the cell. He was a big man, powerful build, though now he looked smaller - like someone had knocked the air out of him so that he was folded in on himself. Tigh stood there a moment watching the other man. He felt the seething hatred, the rage rising within him. Fueled by alcohol, his disgust at the piece of trash in front of him began to make his heart race in anticipation. He could almost feel the satisfaction as his fist slammed into the Toaster's face. There was a long way he could go before he killed this Cylon spy. A long, long way. Starbuck's report on the Cylon they called Leobin suggested that these that human-looking Cylons could feel pain. Well good, because this one was about to experience a whole world of it. He dragged in a hurried breath, the excitement rising further. He clenched his fist, staring down the broken figure, daring it to rise and defy him so that he could get the party started. He wasn't going in there while the traitorous trash can was ignoring him. He waited.

Tyrol took a moment before he looked up, squinting to where the XO stood, the light behind him. 'Saul,' he whispered. There was something like longing in his voice. Recognition, using his given name like that. Right. Head-frack games. Well, not with him. Tigh nodded once to the guard.

The first blow hit with a satisfying crunch. The Chief had gotten halfway up to his knees when Tigh knocked him down again, a fist to the side of his head and a grunt of satisfaction when the man slumped over to the side, a bruise already forming on his left cheek. Tigh didn't say anything, didn't ask anything. The questions could come later. Right now, he was going to beat the crap out of this traitorous machine and enjoy every second of it. So far the Cylon enemy had been distant, hitting the civilian fleet hard and often, but the battles hadn't satisfied his desire to get right in there and beat them hard until they bled and cried out and _suffered_. Another blow, a kick this time, landing right in the solar plexus and another gratifying groan from the prisoner. Yes, this was what he needed, what he'd needed for a while now, a real enemy, right there in front of him, an enemy that his fists and his boots could connect with. _Hard_.

'Get up,' he growled, taking a small step back and glaring down at the prostrate figure lying on its side in front of him. He gestured one of the guards to move closer. This time he wanted to see the fear in the toaster's eyes when his fist struck home. He waited while the Chief moved uneasily to his knees, still crouched over his belly, forehead resting on the floor. His breath was labored, coming in uneven, painful gasps. But he stood up. Slowly. Tigh bunched his fists, preparing for another strike. The Chief met his eyes briefly for a second and winced.

Tigh smiled. His fist came out, fast and hard and the Chief moved suddenly, clutching at his wrist to try and soften the blow, then grabbing on with both hands, pushing their wrists together. The soldier stepped forward, ready to slam down with his rifle. And that was when it happened. In a nanosecond, in half a breath, no longer than a blink, with a twitch and tiny movement in the Chief's wrist, something happened. It came through to him as a sound; a roaring in his ears, like a huge body of water was suddenly rushing toward him, pushing everything and anything out of its way. He felt himself stagger back, looking out of the corner of his eye as the soldier raised the rifle butt beside him. He felt himself turning away, spinning out and down as the rifle connected with the chief's neck and dropped him to the ground. But it was too late. Too late to lose the connection, too late as the Chief spun down to the earth, never letting go of his arm, their wrists and forearms clutched together.

_Of course_, he heard himself think. _Median nerve_. An old trick. Used by lovers and children and anyone who wanted you to _get it_ but couldn't go through the long winded route of having to explain. There was a reason it wasn't used very much. It was raw, primeval, almost painful in the blast of _other _that came through. It was neither gentle nor subtle, but a freakish wave, driving through, making the point without any chance of objection. Even when the Chief lost consciousness, cracking his head on the floor without being able to provide any active input, the connection was still there. He was still breathing, heart still beating, information highway still very much open, arm still clamped to his, some other force holding them both in place, and leaving Saul Tigh to pilfer at will, to go into the Chief's mind and heart, searching and seeking for whatever he pleased.

It was almost automatic, like something he knew about, something he'd done before, and in that moment of confusion after the wave hit he found himself surging back, his consciousness pushing back into the chief's mind, now free of any barriers or restraints.

The soldier was trying to prise their hands apart and Tigh roughly shoved him away with his free hand, the stunned marine shuffling back a step and then standing just at the side of his vision, awkward and uncertain. Tigh stayed there on his knees, his hand still grasped in the Chief's. In Galen's. His friend. His fellow. His countryman. The memories and sensations flowed over him, battering him back and forth just like a tide, like a story, some perfect storm where moon and tides threw down and dared anything and anyone to stand in their path.

Ellen. Tori. Sam. Galen. And all the others. The Ones and Twos, Threes, Fours, numbers, faces, names. It all came to him in a sudden rush. Their escape from their own planet, the grief and despair of having to watch their own people die. Total Armageddon. Total destruction. Their attempt to flee, their desperate attempt to try to build a ship, to get the resurrection technology right, then to escape only to find a new world with the same old problems. Their attempt to get the Cylons on this new world to listen, to offer them their expertise in exchange for peace. Yes, peace had come. For a while. He frowned as his own mind melded with Galen's, as some sort of block was smashed out of the way, so that his own memories and sensations took over. He remembered it all - not just through Galen's mind, but now through his own. They had tried to build a new world, a better world. He paused, letting the memories return to him. What had happened? It had all been going so well. They'd had a few teething problems, sure, but... he went back into Galen's mind.

And what he saw chilled him.

_Cavil_. His wife's narcissistic moment of creation – Cavil, made in her own father's image so that she could work out her psychological wounds and then... and then inflict them on a galaxy and a world that didn't deserve that particular breed of neurosis and megalomania.

_Oh God._

What had they done?


	94. The Link

Chapter 94

The Link

Galen woke to find himself surrounded by grays and whites. It took him a moment to figure out where he was, but he couldn't see much beyond his swollen eyelids. He was still alive, that was on thing. And out of the prison cell. Had he died? Was he lying in a tub on the resurrection ship? No, a small movement of his arm confirmed that it was dry here, he could feel something rubbing against the bare skin on his hand. He opened his eyes more fully, shifting his whole arm a little. He could feel what it was now - rough sheets next to his skin.

'You're awake.' The rasping sound of Saul's voice was low and right next to him, causing him to turn his head. He winced at the explosion of pain that creased across his forehead and down one side. A grunt from Saul as he saw his expression. 'You banged your head,' he said simply. Galen closed his eyes against the memory of the last few minutes before he lost consciousness; Saul's brutal expression, the way he'd hit him, the link. _The link_. Had it worked? He remembered making the connection, his hand desperately trying to cover Saul's median nerve, he'd made the link, felt the burst of sensation as Saul's consciousness opened up to him, but he couldn't recall anything after that. He felt a moment of panic, his automatic reaction to push himself up and face whatever else Saul was going to do.

'Easy.' Saul's hand was firm on his shoulder and he had no choice but to let himself slump back down. 'It's OK. We're safe here. For now.' Was this really Saul next to him or was he still brainwashed and reprogrammed into playing the part of the drunken, stupid XO? He could still smell the tang of liquor on the other man's breath, a sure sign that he'd been drinking himself stupid. He hadn't been a drunk before - sure he'd liked to drink, but not like this. Not the way he'd been on Galactica.

'He awake?' Another voice, then the looming figure of Doc Cottle. 'Let's take a look at you. The XO here says you took a bang on the head.' Galen felt more hands, cooler now and the stench of cigarettes as the Doc's hands probed his head and neck. 'Ouch. That must've hurt. It's not like you to get in a fight, Chief, what's going on?'

Galen winced as he tried to turn his head. Then he realized it wasn't just his head that hurt, his face was swollen as well. Ah, yes, the part where Saul had tried to beat him senseless. He kept his mouth shut and didn't say anything. He'd spent long enough in the army to know that keeping your mouth shut was generally the best way to deflect any unwanted interest. Besides, he didn't know what Saul had said to the Doc, if anything. The fact that he was even here, in Sick Bay, meant that Saul had to be in there somewhere. The XO would have left him to rot in that cell. Unless he was scared that he was going to die and resurrect. Maybe his orders had been to keep Galen alive and he'd gone too far, was worried he was going to die and had brought him here to cover his ass. Either way, Galen was keeping quiet. Doc Cottle would have to take it up a level if he wanted to know more.

'So, is he fit for duty?' Saul's voice sounded harsh and authoritarian.

'Let's take a look at you.' The Doc peered into his eyes and gently felt the bruises on his side.

'Nothing broken, but you took quite a knock. Better to rest up here for a while.'

Galen nodded but didn't say anything. Saul stood to one side, watching him steadily. Once the Doc drifted away, Saul sat back down by the bed, meeting his eyes with an apologetic half smile. 'Sorry,' he muttered. 'Bout that.' he waved generally in the area of Galen's side, where Galen's shirt had lifted to reveal black bruises starting to color his skin.

'How long was I out?' Galen murmured back.

'Not long. Few minutes.'

'Time to bring me here though.'

Saul coughed uneasily. 'Yeah.'

'So what now?'

'How the frak would I know?' Saul's voice came out stronger than Galen had expected. Then the man shook his head, hands dry-scrubbing his face. Galen hesitated. How much did Saul know? Had the link cut out when he lost consciousness? He wasn't sure how good the blocks were that Cavil had put into Saul's mind. Without monitoring the link he had no idea how much he had seen. Had Saul managed to maintain his side of it? If Saul himself had kept the link going then he would have had free access to anything in Galen's mind once he'd been knocked out. If the link had failed then Saul might be stuck in some half-state between the embedded persona of the XO and his real self. In which case he would be crazy and unstable.

'I kept the link going.' Saul said into the silence, breaking into the worry in Galen's mind. 'I saw it all. Sorry.' Yeah, it was considered to be the equivalent of a physical assault to keep a link going when someone had lost consciousness. The link could only be established between two conscious parties, but once the link was there, it could be maintained by only one, provided they were skilled and knew what they were doing, giving them full and free access to the other's mind.

So Saul must have seen everything. Galen flinched a little at the memories of his more 'private' moments with Sharon Valerii. Saul would have seen those in a fraction of a millisecond. Saul coughed again, embarassed, and no doubt trying _not _to relive Galen's most intimate moments. Events seen through the link became part of the other person's own mind, a stock of additional memories and data. Great when collaborating on a project - he and Saul had used the link before - when they had been designing and building the resurrection technology and the various Cylon models. But then both of them had been conscious and in control of what information they chose to share. Galen sighed in resignation. So Saul had unwittingly invaded his mind? Fine. He could live with that. It wasn't as if they weren't friends.

At least he hoped they still were.

'So it was Cavil,' Saul said abruptly, startling Galen again.

Galen nodded slowly. He remembered something of the crazy speech that Cavil had given the five of them before he'd wiped their minds. He certainly recalled the shock and surprise that he'd felt when Cavil had started talking. Actually, he'd been too stunned to remember much of what Cavil had said; a few words, impressions - probably not as much as Cavil had intended. Something about learning a lesson and understanding... something. Whatever, he remembered it had been Cavil, that much was certain.

'He's in the Brig.' Saul added vehemently. 'The little shit-wad had set himself up as the padre on this ship.'

Galen grunted. Saul was right. He'd seen a One around the ship. He hadn't realized that had actually been Cavil. It would fit though, there was nothing Cavil would have liked more than ingratiating himself to the crew by playing God's little messenger.

'What are you going to do with him?'

'Do?' Saul sounded surprised. 'Nothing. Make sure he doesn't resurrect himself out of here.' There was a long pause. 'Can we fix this?' Saul's voice sounded suddenly small and uncertain.

Galen heaved in a breath. The big question: _was it fixable? _

All those people who had died? _No. Not fixable._

The ones left? _Maybe_.

'If I can find out the code he used to block the minds of the other models, then maybe we can break it and get through to them,' Galen said, helpless in the face of what had already happened. It seemed a pathetic gesture at this point. Too little too late.

'Right.' Saul nodded once, 'So...'

'So we need to find one of the models, get inside their heads.' Galen wracked his mind to think if he'd seen any of the other models on the ship. 'Boomer's down on that Island along with another number eight,' he said hopefully, already planning how to get them both back to that planet. He still remembered those coordinates, he-

Saul interrupted him. 'But so is Starbuck and the Commander.'

'What?'

'Starbuck went with the Commander to try and get Apollo back.'

'They took a task force?' The spike of unease grew in his guts, making him wince.

'No. Just one Raptor.'

A pause while Galen thought that one through. 'And President Roslin?'

'Haven't seen her. She's around somewhere.' Saul looked around as if he expected the woman to be skulking about in sick bay.

'Does she know?'

'What, that you're a frakking Cylon? No. He didn't tell her.'

Galen nodded. That was one good thing.

'So...?' Prompted Saul.

'So we try and find one of the models here, figure out how to undo whatever it was Cavil did to their programming.'

'And when the Old Man gets back?'

'I don't know. Depends what we have. If we can get to the others, then maybe...'

Saul gave a bitter laugh. 'Yeah.' He straightened, getting ready to go. 'You rest up, I'll start going through the records. They got papers issued for everyone in the fleet, it'll take a while to go through them.'

'It'll be quicker with two.' Saul eyed him sceptically as Galen struggled off the bed, pushing himself up to something resembling an upright posture. The whole of his left side was agony where Saul had kicked him, and his neck felt like someone had tried to take his head off. The pain made him blink a couple of times and he took a deep breath, steadying himself. 'It's OK, I got it,' he muttered as Saul stepped forward in concern. 'You just keep acting like the XO.' He finally stood up, trying to ignore the slight blurring of his vision. He looked over to where Doc Cottle was glaring disapprovingly, but the Doc made no effort to come any closer. 'Alright. Let's go.'

00000

'When's he going to wake up?'

'I don't know.'

'Aren't you supposed to be the expert?'

'I have theories, that's all. I think it's something to do with the time shift. It's as if our brains need to re-calibrate. I thought the coordinates I gave Starbuck would have mitigated the need for it.'

A grunt from Helo. He and Faraday were standing a little way off from where the Commander was lying under a tarp out of the sun. Sawyer knew where they were. He didn't bother to look up. He just sat reading his book, listening to the conversation with amused disinterest. He'd seen the plane come in, banking slowly until it finally crashed into the line of trees. Like the rest of them, he'd had to scramble to his feet and run down to the waterline when it looked like it was going to plough right through the camp and kitchen area. Luckily everyone had moved their shelters back onto the beach when Starbuck and the Chief had left on the crazy shooting plane, otherwise this new plane would have taken them out. He'd soon settled back in his spot though, watching idly as Starbuck had emerged from the wreckage, both Helo and Apollo helping to drag out an older man. He'd thought he'd heard Apollo shout '_dad_' which piqued his curiosity some, but not enough to get involved again.

There was still no sign of Kate - she must still be at the medical Station. With Juliet. Hurley and Claire were gone too, along with Sun and Jin. Sawyer presumed they were all tending to Jack, involved in their own particular drama there. And as for Jack... well, he'd seen him awake and disheveled a while back, picking at some food in the kitchen area. Sawyer had pointedly gone back to reading his book. He thought he'd seen Sayid having a conversation with him, but next time he looked up Jack was gone and Sayid lurking in the trees watching Apollo and his little army like a thief about to dart out and steal something. More drama. He was beyond it now. Fed up with trying to figure it all out. He was still kinda curious about whether or not Jack realized that the army people were from outer space. That almost made him smile. It had almost felt worth getting up and going over there to hear what Jack and Sayid were saying just so that he could drop it into the conversation at some crucial point. But in the end his book was more interesting and besides, he really didn't want to talk to Jack right now. He didn't want to even look at the guy if he could help it.

And Juliet? She must still be involved with what was going on at the medical station. Pick your drama: some sort of sitcom here on the beach – though more of a military drama, now - or the medical drama in the new hatch. Sawyer wondered what how Charlie was doing. He guessed he must still be alive. And why hadn't Juliet come back to the beach camp? Jack had probably told her it wasn't safe, that as one of the Others she'd be held in suspicion and possibly attacked. Maybe Jack was right, though Juliet should know that Sawyer would protect her, he wouldn't let anything happen to her. She should know that. Maybe she was waiting for him to go over there, maybe she was sitting wondering why he hadn't shown up. Truth was, he wasn't sure why he hadn't. Something about keeping an eye on things here in the camp, something about Jack and Kate and… hell, of course he knew why he hadn't gone.

Everything was different now. Juliet had choices. He wasn't dumb fool enough to think that he'd be anywhere near the top of her list now. He was just making it easier for her, was all. This way she could stay at the medical station and not feel bad for walking away. He felt a tightening in his throat. It was better this way. He didn't have to make like the love sick puppy. And he didn't have to see her with Jack. No, he was cool with it. He'd sit on the beach, read, get over it. Move on. Nothing he hadn't done before.

He idly stretched and looked over to the unconscious form of the older pilot. They'd stripped off the top half of his pilot's suit to try and cool him down and were standing around with concern. Helo had just gotten back from looking at the new plane, and, to Sawyer's amusement, finally pronounced it dead. Helo had used the words with a wry smile, and Sawyer hadn't been sure whether or not he'd meant that the plane had previously been alive or if Helo had been making some sort of wisecrack that Sawyer didn't understand. It got a reaction from Apollo and Starbuck, though. A glare of irritation from Starbuck and a worried look from Apollo.

'I think he's waking up.' Starbuck's voice. Sawyer looked over to where the little huddle stood. Apollo seemed to have lost all pretence of guarding Daniel Faraday and the girl, Penny - he'd even given up bothering much with Sharon, though when Sawyer looked around he realized that Sharon had gone - probably to join the gang at the medical station. Getting her safely away from Starbuck was probably a good idea. Boomer was still there though, still lying looking like death warmed up, though he thought there was maybe a bit more color in her cheeks than before. Racetrack was still with her. Oh, and Sun was there too, giving her some water. Boomer had been asleep all morning, so he'd left her alone, surreptitiously watching from behind his book. OK so he wasn't getting involved anymore, but he did want to make sure that no one tried anything stupid, like killing her in her sleep.

He finally stood up, wandering past where Boomer was sitting. 'You OK?' Her eyes were wide as he crouched next to her. Then she nodded once, the bandage on her face still looking like a massive intrusion. Sun gave Sawyer a welcoming smile.

'I'm just going to change the bandage,' she was saying to Boomer. Another reassuring smile, to Boomer this time. Sawyer moved back, aware of Boomer's discomfort. He guessed she didn't want anyone to see the wound. Sawyer remembered grimly when he'd assumed that the wound was a fake. He remembered the version of her he'd seen on Galactica - the carefree, happy woman she'd been with Helo. He wondered what she remembered of him, whether she remembered him at all. It had been all of five minutes of her life, probably a long time ago. He turned away, focusing instead on where the new pilot seemed to be coming round.

'Dad?'

Ah. Yes, Apollo's father. Sawyer stood up, gave Boomer one last reassuring grimace, and sauntered over to the back of the uniformed group, grabbing some fruit from the kitchen as he went past. If he was eating he'd look way less threatening. He mosied over and stood next to Starbuck, nonchalantly leaning against a tree. He watched quietly as Apollo gave the older man a sip of water and helped him sit up.

'How long was I out for?' the Older Man's voice was croaky and dry.

'About an hour.'

A grunt, then he looked around, meeting Sawyer's gaze almost immediately and holding it with a long level stare. 'We're prisoners?' he asked, never losing eye contact. Sawyer took a bite of his mango and didn't say anything.

'We don't know.' Apollo's voice was strained.

Sawyer coughed and then frowned.

'Where are we?' the old man asked, looking around.

'Kobol.'

Helo started to say something and then stopped, frowning and turning away.

Sawyer pushed away from the tree he was standing against. Then the older man saw Daniel Faraday. 'You!' he breathed, his voice full of venom.

'Commander!' Daniel said cheerfully. 'Welcome to Earth!'


	95. Download

Chapter 95

Download

'Here.' Saul schooled his expression into neutrality as he handed over the file; a single sheet of paper, typed, with a photo attached to it. They had begun going through the fleet records, starting with the crew on Galactica and the senior political staffers in the civilian fleet. Thankfully there were no 'official' Cylons amongst the military, no one else there that could do any damage. No one except Ellen, of course, doing whatever she did during the hours that Saul was on duty. She still had no idea about who or what she was and so far Saul hadn't mentioned it, thankfully hadn't tried to undo Cavil's programming and bring her into their efforts to try and salvage something from this whole sickening mess. Galen fervently hoped that Saul kept it that way for as long as possible. Bringing Ellen into the mix had always been a recipe for dramatic disaster.

Galen took the sheet of paper and examined it carefully. He stared at the photograph and then skimmed through the short description underneath.

_Tori._

'She's been hanging around the president,' Galen said quietly, focusing on the photograph of Tori looking serious and staring defiantly at the camera. That was some mug shot. She had always been into politics, and he wasn't surprised to see that she was still plotting, planning and making herself indispensable. He stared closely at the photograph. It was her alright, that familiar arrogant, rebellious expression on her face. At first he'd liked that fire, the determination. That was before he'd had to experience the raw brutality of her ambition. So many times during the long journey from their own devastated world, he'd wished she'd stayed behind. He hadn't wished that she'd died or anything, just... well, that she'd survived somewhere else. It wasn't as if she had even been part of the university group - neither Tori nor Ellen had been - it had been just the three of them who had overseen the project; Galen, Saul and Sam… But Saul couldn't leave Ellen behind and Galen couldn't leave Tori. She was his wife, after all, though the way things had been going before they'd left he doubted their marriage would have lasted much longer. He'd made the best of it, that was all, determined to make it work out in such a small group. But in the confines of a small space ship her influence had been nothing short of poisonous.

'You want to go find her?' Saul was watching him edgily; clearly he was having similar thoughts. Well, Ellen wasn't a cakewalk either and Galen wasn't the only one with a wife that managed to foul up all their plans. The creation of Cavil being the case in point. Difference was Saul doted on his wife, whereas he...

Galen shook his head and took a long slow breath. 'No. It wouldn't help. I need one of the models.'

There was a pause as Saul looked down, embarrassed. 'That wasn't what I meant.'

Galen sighed. Of course it wasn't. Saul thought he should rush to Tori's ship and bring her right back. He hesitated for a moment before he spoke again, choosing his words. 'There's no time. And where she is now - well, she seems OK there. I don't think she can do much damage, and if she was anything like us she won't have any idea who she really is. For now, I think it's better that way. Waking her up isn't our priority.' He hoped Saul would get the hint and leave Ellen alone too. Of course Saul could use the link and crash through Cavil's programming to reset Ellen's brain in the same way Galen had with Saul. Galen couldn't tell him not to do it - she was his wife, after all; he just hoped that Saul would wait. Galen could easily imagine Ellen going to where Cavil was locked up and dramatically releasing him with tearful protestations of his innocence. No. He _really _hoped that Saul had the good sense to wait. 'I think we should leave Tori where she is,' he said. 'Let's straighten this out first. She can't help with this part and we need to keep you in command as long as possible.' Galen firmly put the paper with the mug-shot back down on the table.

Saul sucked in a soft breath and then turned to the huge stack of papers in front of him, continuing to carefully go through each one.

xxxx

'So you're a medic.'

The Four - Simon - looked uncertain, letting his gaze flit from the XO then back to the Chief. 'That's right.' They had called him here the moment they'd found his file, asking for him to be sent from the civilian ship he was living on, trying to keep it low key; a single marine to escort him, a low level summons to the Commander's quarters. The man looked confused and anxious - but then anyone would in his position.

They were in Adama's office, using the relative quiet and privacy of the place to conduct the interview. Adama would be furious, they both knew, but this was the only place where they could be sure that what they had to do or say wouldn't be seen or overheard. Galen stood a little to the side, letting Saul conduct the interview in his role as the XO.

'Do you know who we are?' Saul asked curtly, his hands clenching and unclenching in a reflexive fist. The gesture wasn't lost on the Four who swallowed nervously and then pulled himself a little more upright in his chair.

'You're the XO of Galactica and, um, Chief Tyrol.' The Four turned to look at Galen and give a wan, false smile, 'My wife works with you. Gianna.'

His wife? There was a pause while Galen had to quickly review where this was going. This Four was married to one of the humans on Galactica? His mind raced through the possibilities. Gianna was part of his crew, one of the better engineers that had come to him from the civilian fleet. Was their connection significant? Was this Four trying to sabotage the planes? Or was he oblivious to everything, a sleeper agent considering himself human and in love until the time he was activated. Galen glanced uneasily at Saul.

'Has anything happened to my wife? Is she alright?' The Four looked around anxiously at the two men, then fixed his attention on Galen. The whole thing was a nice cover story, Galen thought ruefully, a neat concoction; the whole wife and medic beyond suspicion thing. Galen had to hand it to Cavil, the man was as wily as a fox.

'Your wife's fine,' he said quickly, not wanting to engage with the man's anxious expression. Either he was a good actor or his feelings were genuine. Apart from Ellen's pet projects of Cavil and Leobin, all of the Cylon models had been programmed with a fundamental honesty and simplicity - qualities that Galen and Sam had decided were basic to healthy interaction. And this Four was one that he and Sam had collaborated on personally. They had made sure that he was completely honest, earnest and straightforward. All the qualities you'd look for in a competent medic. He wasn't designed to lie well, and however much Cavil had tampered with his programming, it was doubtful that he could have given this Four a complete personality change - maybe switched off some of his ethical subroutines, but not changed the basic personality. No, his concern was genuine.

Saul cleared his throat and reached out to the pile of papers on the desk, pulling out a picture of Cavil. 'You know this man?'

The Four took the photograph. His hands were shaking. 'Um.' The Four looked down at the picture and then blanched.

'So you do know him?'

A stuttered pause.

'And you know what he is?'

The Four made to stand up but Galen clamped his hand down hard on his shoulder. 'Easy.' He said quietly. 'You're safe here.'

The Four allowed himself to be pushed back down, though the tension still kept his back taut and his eyes darting around in panic.

Galen paused. What now? For the moment he and Saul had no idea how much this Four knew, how deep Cavil's plans went with the rest of the models or whether their programming had all been tampered with. This one had recognized Cavil's picture, so it looked like he knew that he himself was Cylon. Not like Boomer. This Four – Simon - his awareness seemed different from hers. Either that or Boomer was a much better actor. But then Boomer was his own design and Galen sure as hell hadn't programmed that into her.

Galen dragged his hands across his face. This was a mess. Trying to think it all through was giving him a headache. He looked up to where Saul was standing, waiting for him to make a decision. Just like old times. Galen with the ideas and the drive, Saul as backup - harried by Ellen, of course. And Sam, Sam right there with him, all ideas and laughter and energy. There'd been no sign of Sam in any of the documents they'd gone through so far. But they didn't have time to search through them all. They had found this one -this Four - first, and Galen needed to get a look inside his head before the Cylons attacked again, before Starbuck returned with the Commander and Apollo and things really turned ugly. 'We need to take him to the Hanger Deck,' he said decisively. Saul nodded quickly, but trusting Galen's judgement.

Galen gestured for the man to get up. 'C'mon, let's go.'

'Where are you taking me?'

'The hanger deck.'

'Why?'

'We need your help with something.' The Four looked confused, about to say something, but then Galen rushed in with, 'Look, it's classified, alright? But if you cooperate nothing bad'll happen to you.'

Another flash of fear told him that the Four wasn't convinced, but thankfully saw his best option to be one of cooperation. For the moment. Galen knew that he and Saul were on a knife edge. The Cylon models were built with more physical strength than he or Saul combined and if this one decided to kick off…

The hanger deck was quiet and the Chief stalled any curious comments from his deck crew by moving with purpose, flanked by the XO. Even so, they were half way to the Cylon Raider before Giana emerged, looking confused and concerned, glancing worriedly as her husband strode in. 'What's going on?'

Galen swore softly. This was the last thing they needed.

'It's OK, we just need him to check something out.'

'Is he in trouble?'

'No.' Galen hesitated, 'We just need his... medical input with the Cylon Raider.'

She looked confused, then light dawned in her eyes. 'Oh, right. I suppose it is alive - in a way.' Galen nodded, hoping she would buy it without thinking it through too carefully. He guessed it made some sort of sense. Simon the medic looking at the living plane. 'Can I watch?'

Galen paused again. 'You need to step back a bit, give us some room, huh?'

Galen put a hand on the plane and placed his palm over the pad on the plane's side, breathing out in relief as the hatch slid open. Eerything was still working then. He gestured the Four to crawl inside. The Four hesitated, then did as he was asked, finally hunkering down at the back in the same way as he and Starbuck had a few hours before. 'Now place your palm right there, on that little patch next to you.'

The Four hesitated then did as he was told. Galen waited a second, allowing the connection to take before he too put his palm on the side of the plane, this time at the patch on the other side. He jolted as he felt the connection - not just with the plane but also with the Four - the power of it threw him, almost threw his mind out. Whatever Cavil had done to the Four had been strong and clumsy, but wired so that anyone trying to interfere would get enough feedback to throw them out of the link. Galen steadied himself and silently ordered the plane to take point, to forge ahead and take any more shocks. Strange how he was using military terms to describe what to do inside someone's head. But the plane obeyed, quickly moving its own mind into a position to take the heat from any more of Cavil's little traps.

'What's happening?' Simon was saying.

'Just keep your hand on the panel and don't move!' Galen said harshly. He could feel the strain of it now, the sweat beading on his forehead as he fought to hold onto the connection, stabilizing the relationship between himself, the Four and the plane.

He felt Simon shift slightly, heard him swallow nervously and then he was still and silent. Galen pushed ahead with the link, feeling his own consciousness moving steadily into the mind of the Four. He had to get to the code that Cavil had used, and the only way he could do that was by copying it directly from the Four's mind. Galen eased his mind into position. He'd done this many, many times before; not using a plane's touch pad - he'd never needed to do that, there were interfaces they had built especially for the purpose, but the principle was the same. He ordered the plane to freeze and carefully examined the inner structure of the programming landscape inside the Four's mind. He'd always found the inner architecture of the Cylon models to be breathtakingly beautiful, always been awed by the sheer grandeur of the design that he and the others had created. It was based on their own brains after all, and their brains, he used to believe, had been created by God.

He stilled a little with that thought. Did he still believe that? Where was God in all of this mess? He wasn't sure. But at the time it had driven him, given him hope and delighted him. Given him purpose. Now, for some reason, he realized that the thought of God depressed him.

He pressed on. Colors and light. Shapes and definition. All looked OK. Except one part. He stopped his mental journey in front of a badly botched section, numbers and code frayed and messy/ He'd finally arrived at Cavil's attempt to manipulate and control. Galen looked at it curiously. It was crude compared to the rest of the man's mind, but obviously strong enough to stand the test of time.

He slowly circled the mass of numbers and code that Cavil had created. It was brutal but effective. What would happen if he took it apart, if he bludgeoned through it? He couldn't see what there was on the other side. For all he knew there was a self destruct protocol that would drive the Cylon beside him insane. He paused. This was one of his models. The doctor; gentle, thoughtful, whose role was to heal and reassure. The calm quiet had been something that he had been proud of. Would that be lost? Would this Four turn into a crazed psycho killer or something equally as sinister if he took away the false code? With a frustrated sigh he pulled back a moment and hesitated, then withdrew completely. He couldn't risk trying to fix the Four's programming. He needed time to download the Four's recorded data from the plane, get a better look at it so that he could figure out the best way to dissolve Cavil's code without damage.

Problem was, they didn't have that much time. Saul could hold off the President and the demands of Galactica for a while, but it was only a matter of time before Starbuck came back with the Commander, or the Cylons attacked again, or there was some other crisis in the fleet.

'You can take your hand off of the plate now.' He said quietly to the Four.

The Four took his hand away slowly, looking shocked and shaken. He was covered in sweat. He took a second to compose himself enough to speak. 'What was that? What just happened? What did you-?'

'Your programming is damaged.' Galen said wearily, leaning back against the side of the plane.

Simon swallowed and looked away briefly. Then he turned, his expression a little more determined. 'Do I know you?'

'Maybe.'

Simon paused, licked his lips nervously. 'You know who I am. How?'

Galen hesitated, almost about to say something like because I built you. But he stopped. No. That wasn't the way. No tricks. He wanted to see that moment of recognition, not have it faked or made up. Besides, he had no idea until he had a better look at the code whether or not Cavil had rigged up some sort link between this Cylon's mind and others in the fleet. He couldn't risk revealing his identity until he knew exactly what he was dealing with.

Galen hesitated. 'Cavil is in the Brigg.' He said, careful not to answer the question.

'He told you.' The Four slumped back in defeat

Galen didn't say anything.

'I guess he wants me out of the way.' The Four said, tight lipped.

'Any idea why?'

The Four gave a snort of derision, 'Because I wouldn't do what he wanted.'

'Which was?'

'Destroy the ship I was on.'

There was a long, painful silence.

'Does Gianna know?' The Four asked quietly.

'That you're a Cylon?' Galen shook his head. 'No. She doesn't.'

'Are you going to tell her?'

'No.' Galen observed the Four closely.'Cavil has blocked off part of your programming. I'm trying to fix it.'

'Using the interface on the plane.'

'That's right.'

'And you're doing this because...?'

'Because we don't believe that the Cylons really want to destroy the human race.'

The Four gave a bitter laugh. 'I think you're too late for that.'

'You're living among a whole fleet of humans. And I'm guessing Cavil put you there. Along with others. But if, like you say, you don't want to fall with Cavil's plan-'

'I'm not going to tell you anything.'

'I haven't asked you to. You wanted to know why I'm trying to fix your programming.'

'Or get the plane to do that.'

Galen didn't say anything.

'But you're not a Cylon,' Simon said flatly.

Galen didn't answer him.

'Because if you were I'd know about it, right?' There was hope in Simon's eyes, something...

Galen looked away, huffing a deep breath.

Galen could sense the Four's frustration. Clearly he wasn't going to recognize him or Saul or any of them.

'So... what do you want from me?'

'Your programming. Like I said, we're trying to fix this. I'm made a copy of the corrupted code. I'm going to take a look at it and see if I can straighten it out. From what you've said I'm guessing that you do want the human race destroyed – including your wife and child?

He saw the Four flinch a moment and then look down. 'No.'

'But you know that Cavil does?'

Silence.

'Look, this is going to take a while. We're going to have to detain you, keep you somewhere safe until we figure out a way to fix this.'

The Four swallowed hard. 'Whatever you think I am,' he mumbled quietly, 'I love my wife and I'd do anything to protect her.'

'Right. So the best think for everyone is if you go quietly with the XO and he'll find you a safe place and keep you there until I've sorted this mess out.'

'Can you sort it out?' The Four looked on, his eyes full of despair.

'I don't know.'

The Four thought for a moment and then nodded. 'Alright. I'll do it.' Then he paused. 'Please. Don't tell Gianna. Not yet.'

Galen hesitated, nodded.

As soon as they crawled out of the plane Gianna was there, anxiously holding the Four's arm. He turned to her wearily and held her away from him. 'It's fine... look, there's more things I need to work on - classified. So until that's done I won't be home for a while, OK?'

She glanced at Galen, her face registering worry and concern, not soothed by the grim expressions of the men around him.

'Could you find him some safe accommodation?' Galen asked Saul, hoping that he'd get the message that they were trying to play this one down.

Saul gave a curt nod.

'Give me a moment, OK?' the Four asked quietly, already taking Gianna a few steps away from them.

Galen watched them carefully, easing over to Saul, aware suddenly of the curious looks of the knuckledraggers. Gossip would be running around the hanger deck like an incendiary oil spill. 'Well?' asked Saul.

'Cavil turned that Four's head into a crap shoot.'

'Can you fix it?'

Galen shrugged. 'I got a couple of ideas.'

Saul raised an amused eyebrow. 'OK. What do we do?'

Galen dragged in a deep breath. 'It's a risk, but... I think our best shot is we set up the Raider, plug in a fix for the code based on what I've seen in the Four, send the Raider out and broadcast it. Make it viral.'

'Will that even work?'

Galen shrugged. 'I don't know. What else we got?'

'Nothing and no time. The Old Man should be due back any moment.'

Galen nodded. 'Buy me an hour and I figure I can rig it up.'

'An hour? That's all?'

'I copied his programing to the Raider. Shouldn't take long to break the corrupted code. Cavil wasn't exactly subtle.'

'What did you tell the Four?'

'Nothing. He didn't recognize either of us, and I want to keep it that way. We've no idea what'll happen once we take out Cavil's program. For all we know Cavil has put in some fail safe that'll blow out every Cylon brain from here to Caprica. And if that happens, then I don't want any crazy Cylons knowing more than they have to.'

Saul grunted. 'It didn't blow your brain out. Or the Raider's.'

'The Raider isn't as complex. Or as fully sentient. We've no idea how this will affect the human models.'

Saul puffed out a breath and nodded vigorously. 'Well, like you say. We've no choice.'


	96. Fix

Chapter 96

Fix

Coming up with the fix for the Cylon models took less time than Galen had thought it would; the programming that Cavil had put in place was so crude it was almost laughable. Or it would have been, if it hadn't caused the destruction of nearly the whole human race. Galen tried not to think about that as he kept working, ignoring the looks of his team and the questioning silence from Gianna as she went about her work, her eyes constantly straying to where he was working on the Raider. Thankfully she stayed away and he could access the plane's database and computer system without worrying too much about what she might have thought had she seen his new found familiarity with the inner workings of the plane. By the end of a half hour he was done. Now he just had to get the fix installed into the plane's mainframe. To do that he would need to creation a partition inside the plane's memory, a process that would take about a half hour to complete once he set it running. Then he only had to try and track Saul down and get him to authorize the flight.

In the meantime he started work on modifying one of the Raptor's computer systems so that he could land it safely out of the EM wave. From what he could remember from his own crash landing, something had happened to cause the main thruster controls to lose integrity. If he could boost power to the port and starboard stabilisers that would give him more control as he came in to land... he was still lost in thought when he heard a discreet cough that told him Saul had returned. He hauled himself out from under the Raptor to see Saul standing in front of him, looking around nervously. 'No sign of Starbuck or the Commander?' he asked stiffly.

'No.' Galen wiped his hands on a rag and dragged in a deep breath.

Saul shifted uneasily. 'They should have been back by now. It's been too long.'

Galen straightened and thought for a moment. 'All the planes that went there crashed. Only the Raider made it.'

Saul pursed his lips. 'So maybe we should go in with the Raider again. Send out the virus when we get back.'

Galen shook his head. 'There's no time – and who would say that the Commander would even authorize that? No, we need the Raider now, we have to get the new code out there asap.'

'What about using the Cylon transponder, like you rigged for Boomer's Raptor when-' Saul stopped and thought for a moment.

Galen gave him a half smile. 'Yeah, you figured that one out. It was Boomer that got that Raptor to the Base Star, not the transponder. Anything that isn't Cylon will be shot down before it has a chance to broadcast. It has to be the Raider.'

'But the Commander-' Saul stopped himself and sighed in frustration. 'We can't leave him there, and if the Raider is the only plane that can land there...' he let his voice trail off.

Galen patted the side of the Raptor. 'I've just about finished making some changes that should get me there without a crash land. It's pretty much good to go.'

Saul nodded slowly. 'I'll go with you.'

'No. You're needed here. We don't know what'll happen once that signal is beamed out.'

'Gentlemen?' Galen and Saul swung around quickly. Laura Roslin was standing a little way off, another woman standing beside. Galen recognized her immediately: Elosha the priestess. She was in her ceremonial outfit – complete with robes, shawl and staff and clutching a large book to her chest. He let his eyes sweep over her briefly and then turn back to Laura Roslin. The President frowned, taking in the Raptor, the Raider and the two men standing awkwardy in front of her. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. 'What's going on?'

Saul coughed and Galen felt his heart sink. This was all they needed. Saul began to make some stuttering excuse and Galen stepped forward quickly. 'We think we've found a way to send a virus through the Cylon fleet, Madam President. I've managed to access the Cylon Raider's core program and now we're going to launch the plane.'

She frowned. 'I thought the Commander wanted to keep the plane-'

Galen nodded over to Saul and murmured quietly. 'I just need your authorization, Sir.' He looked pointedly at Saul, willing him to blank the President and at least let them get the Raider in the air before she kicked off. Saul nodded once and Galen stepped away, and quickly turned to the Cylon Raider. He could Saul deflecting the first assault from the President.

'That is classified information, Ma'am...' Galen's heart sank. The President was naturally suspicious and now he could sense she was on red alert. The experienced school teacher in her could tell that something underhand was going on and he could tell she wasn't going to let it go until she understood exactly what was happening.

'So explain,' she said stiffly, 'What exactly are you doing with the Cylon plane?'

He heard Saul's sigh as he crouched beside the Raider and opened the hatch so that he could crawl inside and activating the control panel. He checked that the partition had been created and the program completed, giving a sigh of relief when everything looked good to go. He shuffled in further and put his hand on the control panel. The Activating sequence was laughably simple: _go to any Cylon Basestar in range and broadcast the following code._ He checked that the ship had the original schematics of the Cylon neural pathways, gave the code that would break Cavil's programmed defences and then the sequence for a clean install that would override any tampering or changes in the Cylon brain. It was a hard reset, a last resort that he and Sam had coded into the Cylon models. They had anticipated that there could _theoretically_ be disastrous errors or faults over time and they had come up with this simple way of fixing it. Only he and Sam had the authorization - only he and Sam even knew it was an option, and had decided to keep that piece of information from Ellen and Tori - and by extension Saul, who could never keep his mouth shut where Ellen was concerned. They hadn't planned on it being used. It had been put in as a last resort and he knew that what he was doing was drastic and would knock out every Cylon that was exposed to it. The one good thing was that Cylon memories were stored in a partition that would be kept intact. Luckily the memory storage partition wasn't the part of their brains that Cavil had tampered with. Galen could have wiped that too, let them all start completely fresh, but he wanted the Cylons to remember. He wanted them to know what had happened. If for nothing else, he wanted to find out exactly what had gone wrong and how Cavil had claimed so much power. But more than that, he wanted them to learn.

He closed his eyes and concentrated, double checking the code quickly to make sure that it was right, his hand on the control panel and the interface streaming seamlessly through his own mind and consciousness. The whole process took less than a minute. When he finally took his hand away from the plane's interface and crawled backwards out of the plane, Saul was still trying to talk his way through President Roslin's persistent questioning.

'... looks like we found a way to crack the code and we now have a virus that we are sending out to the whole of the Cylon fleet,' Saul was saying.

'Does the Commander know about this?' Laura's voice was taking on a louder, more strident quality that spelled trouble. The Priestess was standing just behind her, clutching the book, her prayer shawl over her shoulders, her face set in a thin line. Galen could hear from Saul's tone that he was beginning to lose this fight.

'Well?' the President asked again. 'Did the Commander authorize this or not?'

Saul hesitated a split second too long and Laura Roslin's eyes narrowed.

'It's classified, Madam President,' Galen said hastily, coming to stand beside Saul. 'I'm sorry, but we're not at liberty to discuss this with you.' He turned to Saul. 'It's ready Sir.'

Saul audibly sighed in relief. 'Right. Send it out.'

Galen saluted and quickly turned to his crew. 'OK, let's get this baby flying!' he shouted, waving his arms to emphasize his point, making sure his team were moving too snappily to argue or be freaked out by the way the Cylon plane was powering up without a pilot inside. Galen spared a quick glance to Saul, still standing awkwardly beside the President. He was hopelessly unassertive with women, Galen thought ruefully. With any luck the noise of the cranes and the shouting of his knuckledraggers would stop the President from saying any more until the Raider was out and flying.

He watched in silence as the cranes dragged the Raider to the hoist and it rose slowly to the upper deck. He breathed a sigh of relief as it swept out of sight.

Galen's attention was already on the Raptor he planned to take out.

Saul's eyes narrowed and he muttered quietly, 'You sure this is a good idea?'

Galen stared vacantly for a moment, then nodded. 'If it's a Cylon trap, then I guess I'll just have to deal with that. If it isn't, then my guess is that they're not back because they damaged the Raptor they were in going down. In which case, I'll fetch them back.'

The President had been standing a couple of feet away, uncharacteristically silent while she took this all in. 'What makes you think you can land this one safely?' she asked, following their gaze to the waiting Raptor.

'I've made some adjustments that should make the landing a little easier,' Galen answered her impatiently, deciding to cut this conversation short. He turned to Saul. 'I'll be as quick as I can.' Saul's look told him that he shared the guilt driving his motivations, because yes, whatever either of them did now could never make up for what had happened and getting Adama, Apollo and Starbuck out of there was nothing. And besides, Boomer was down there. And whether or not he was married to Tori now - whatever that meant - Boomer was still there, still sick, still in need of his help. And he still loved her.

'This one's ready to go. I'll start the pre-flight now.'

'Can he fly planes?' The President looked confused as Galen stepped up the ramp to the Raptor and swung himself into the pilot seat. Before he could shut the hatch door he realized that the President and Elosha were inside the plane.

'We're coming with you.' The President said firmly.

Galen turned sharply, taking in the determined expressions of both the President and the Priestess next to her. 'It's too dangerous,' he said firmly, 'And you're need with the fleet, Madam President.'

'I think we all know that our only hope is to find a new home. If we don't manage that then there will be no fleet.'

The President's mouth was set in determination. 'I am obliged to go.' She said firmly. 'The temple of Athena is on Kobol, and the Prophecy-' she stopped mid-sentence, as if that was all she needed to say, clearly reluctant to have to explain more of her motivation.

For Galen, the pieces began to fall into place. _Earth_. _The Arrow of Apollo_. _The Temple of Athena_. The wacky prophecy in the book of Pythia that foretold the finding of Earth. All very well, but Starbuck hadn't gotten The Arrow of Apollo and now Galen wasn't even sure that the planet he was going to _was _even Kobol. He almost started to protest, and then shut his mouth quickly when he realized that of course it would be better for all of them if the President wasn't on Galactica and if Saul could be left to deal with whatever issues arose without her watching him so closely. Galen sighed. However dumb her motivations, for Saul's sake, for the sake of the Cylons, Galactica and the fleet, getting the President out of the way was a good thing.

Galen shrugged, feigning indifference. 'It might be a bumpy ride,' he said, indicating that the two women strap themselves in at the back of the plane.

'Nothing I'm not used to,' he heard the President say as she gave her companion a victorious look and moved to the back of the plane and sat down.

00000

It was definitely a show, of sorts. The kind of side-show that everyone watched from the edges of their vision but no one dared to stare at openly. Over the last few days, military ships had been coming and going, landing and crashing and dropping off personnel with guns and uniforms and no one knew what the hell was going on and no one appeared to want to ask. Even Frogurt was silent, Sawyer reflected wryly; maybe he was cowed by the military hardware and the stony faces. No one knew whether or not these people were the good guys and no one seemed to want to find out. Sawyer had decided to keep his distance, moving back to sit with his back against his tree, ostensibly reading but he had long since given up on his book, choosing instead to sit facing the front toward the ocean, his whole attention on the small, patient huddle that he could see from the corner of his eyes, where Starbuck and Apollo were waiting anxiously for the older guy to wake up. He'd finally recognized who he was, hard to get a good look when he was lying down, but now he could see that the older guy was the Commander he'd seen that first time on Galactica when Juliet had vomited during that ceremony. Sawyer let his mind wander, thinking back to that time – meeting Helo and Boomer and Juliet splashing her puke all over the side of the ship. It made him smile now. It seemed like such a long time ago.

The Commander looked older now, he noticed: more worn, but the face was the same. Sawyer had no idea what that meant, no idea about the implications. He remembered that conversation with Boomer around the fire when she spoke of Apollo and Starbuck and – didn't she say that the Commander was Apollo's dad? He shook his head, frustrated that he couldn't remember more, and annoyed that more than that, he had no idea what it meant to them all and their chances of living through the next few days. It was always so quiet here on the beach, so much like paradise; the sun, the surf. Didn't look like any danger should be lurking in the shadows. But Sawyer had experienced enough to know that everything could just as well go Boom! In the next ten minutes and he would have no idea that it was coming.

'Hurley said that a new plane had arrived.'

Sawyer jumped, then squinted up at the sun. A figure was silhouetted agains the light. He knew by the voice that it was Juliet. _There_. Right in front of him. As she moved around from in front of the sun he could an expression something like apology in her eyes. He swivelled to face her, still holding his hand over his eyes. She looked like she had lost weight and rats had camped out in her hair.

'Hey.' He said, feeling his mind turn to mush at the sight of her.

She sat down wearily beside him and wrinkled her nose a little. 'I stink,' she said flatly. He shifted over to make room for her.

'Welcome to paradise.'

She smiled, closing her eyes against the sun, drinking it in.

He waited a moment, hesitating to say anything that would break this spell, this feeling that everything was alright between them.

'So what's going on over there?' without opening her eyes she gestured vaguely toward the military huddle.

He smiled, shifting a little to feel more of her arm along his side. 'Another military plane crashed. The older guy is still out of it. Woke up for a while back there then passed out again. That was a few hours ago. Looks like he's waking up for good now though. Oh, and he's the Commander and Apollo's dad,' he added with a smile.

Juliet turned to look and they both watched in silence as Apollo lifted the Commander's head up enough for him to sip some water. The Commader looked dazed, but well enough.

'How's Charlie?' Sawyer asked quietly.

'Better. A little. We think he's going to make it.'

_We._ Sawyer tried not to react, tried not to feel the dark flood of jealousy thrumming through him, tried not to go there.

'Sun and Hurley are watching him and-'

A shadow. Sawyer turned to look. 'You OK?' Jack's voice. He was standing right over them, his big bulk blotting out the sunshine.

'Of course she's OK.' Sawyer spat out between gritted teeth.

Jack ignored him and focused instead on Juliet. Her whole attention was on Jack now. Totally. She frowned then stood up, brushing down her pants and stepping toward him. 'You ready?' he asked her.

'What's going on?' Sawyer asked, his voice stilted.

'We're going to find out what these people are doing here.'

He caught Juliet's uncertain look, the deep, slow breath that told him she was scared. He scrambled to his feet, looking around for Helo and Sharon, for anyone who had any idea what was really happening. He was halted by Jack's hand in front of his face. 'No, you wait here. We figured that just me and Juliet wouldn't threaten them.'

'_You _figured.'

'Yeah, that's right. C'mon Sawyer, don't make an ugly situation worse.'

He glanced over to Juliet and she didn't meet his eyes, but kept her attention on Jack. Sawyer glared as he watched them pick their way over to the small huddle of uniforms. He made a grunt of distaste as he followed the exchange from a distance. He didn't need the words, he could see it clear enough; Jack striding up to them, nodding in his professional, surgeon, way, the firm handshake with Apollo, ignoring the suspicious glance from Starbuck, then the introductions followed by him crouching down to examine the prone figure of the uniformed man on the ground. A perfunctory doctorly examination and then another quiet conversation. Juliet was standing at the edge of the circle, her arms folded protectively around her belly. She looked lost, vulnerable. He sighed and took a step toward her, softly edging to the outskirts of the group. Starbuck clocked his arrival but didn't move.

'So you think you can get us all off this Island?' Jack was saying. Sawyer winced, then gently touched Juliet on the shoulder. She looked over at him, unsurprised that he was there. He gestured her to step back a little and she took a few hesitant steps into the shadow of the trees.

'What's going on?'

'Jack's trying to get us out of here.'

'With them?' His incredulous look must have told it all.

She shrugged hopelessly.

'To their space ship?' He hissed.

She gave him a surprised and startled look, then her face settled into a strange impassivity. 'We don't know it's a space ship.'

He almost laughed. Almost. Then shook his head. 'You were the one telling me about time travel and-'

She cut him off. 'Maybe you were right. Maybe we did take something, some drug or-'

He shook his head. 'Oh c'mon-!'

She looked helplessly at the small group of military uniforms. Her voice was small now. 'This is all so... crazy. Look, I- I just want off this Island, OK? I don't care how or where, I just want to go.'

'Thought you wanted to go home.'

'Yeah, well, maybe I just don't have that choice. Maybe it's between being trapped here forever or- ' she stopped and took a sudden breath, swallowing a sob. He suddenly saw how exhausted she looked - he doubted she'd slept in the past two days. She visibly straightened, pulling herself upright. 'I just know I can't stay here.'

He waited, watching her, longing to put his arms around her, to make it all go away. But Jack was there and Juliet was like some spiky thing the sea washed in. He hesitated and she shifted way a little, the moment gone. 'This is crazy,' he muttered. 'Look, we'd be better waiting for real help to arrive - from _this_ planet,' he added as an afterthought.

She gave a bitter laugh. 'We don't have the luxury of time, James. How long do you think before Ben gets here? And if Jack and the rest of these people all leave, what then? You think Ben will leave us alone? How long before he does something that-'

'Hey, I won't let him.'

'You wouldn't be able to stop him.'

Sawyer almost ground his teeth in frustration as he realized she was right. He had only just survived his last encounter with Ben, locked up in those cages. The memory of Kate, the cages, the rain, kneeling with that gun to his head... he shuddered. She was right. 'So we hide then,' he said, 'Like the French bird.'

Juliet shook her head, opened her mouth to speak and then stopped, her attention focused on something behind his shoulder. Sawyer turned to see what had her attention, There was another plane coming in over the sea. He squinted to get a better look at it as it come quickly into view. Another of the helicopter planes was flying in, hugging the sea and coming in low. He held his breath, waiting for the sickening acceleration, the predictable thud as it hit another of the trees. But it came in slowly and carefully, smoothly gliding down to land with a small bump no more than thirty yards away from the camp. There was a long, slow pause, like the whole camp had been holding its breath with him. There was few seconds of surprise when no one moved and then Starbuck took a pace forward as the hatch on the plane opened. She was armed again, Sawyer noticed, some fancy sniper rifle she'd brought with her. It had been stashed on the sand out of sight. Sawyer looked on in mounting anxiety as he recognized her stance. He turned to look at the figure of the Chief standing framed in the hatch doorway of the plane. There was the sound of a rifle being cocked as Starbuck aimed the rifle squarely at him.

'The president's passed out.' The Chief said clearly from the plane's hatch, loud enough for the small group to hear, 'Along with Elosha,' he added, looking squarely at Starbuck and daring her to fire the gun.


	97. Trek

Chapter 97

Trek

Desmond staggered through the undergrowth. He was tired, dripping with sweat and more hungry than he wanted to admit. The woman in the red dress was still ploughing ahead, her back a determined red flag waving at him through the trees. They'd been walking for several hours now. Her pace had slowed, he realized. She had matched his steadily decreasing rhythm, kept just ahead of him, not waiting, exactly, but seeming to know how much to slow down to accommodate his flagging steps, and yet staying far enough ahead of him to still entice him forward. He wished she'd just stop for a moment and let him rest. He'd tried speaking to her, had breathlessly called out for a halt soon after they had first headed out of the clearing where they had left the two bodies of the dead men behind. Her reply had been curt and succinct. 'There are more,' she'd said, 'They are following us.' Then she had turned and kept walking. After that he had gritted his teeth and struggled after her, not speaking again in case they were heard by whoever was following them.

He could tell by the sun that she was leading them South. _South_. Back to the beach, back to the hatch, to the survivors of the plane crash. At least he knew that they were friendly enough. Unlike the ones that were tailing them.

He struggled on. The woman in front of him didn't seem to tire or flag. Nor did she hesitate in her long march South. Eventually, when he decided he was going to collapse whether he wanted to or not, the jungle opened out to a small clearing. She was there, sitting down beside a stream, demurely dabbing the cool water on her face. He plunged himself onto his knees, scooping up the water thirstily. She didn't say anything, but frowned, looking around carefully. 'Someone is coming.' She said quietly, almost ominously. He paused and looked up, tensed and alert.

'It's just me.' John Locke's voice, softly spoken from within the trees. There was a shift of movement as his outline separated from the trunk of a tree. He emerged slowly, carefully. 'I'm guessing you were responsible for the two dead men back there.'

'They were trying to kill us.'

He sucked in a breath and then knelt down to drink. 'Someone stirred up a hornet's nest. There's a big group of them behind us. Headed South.' He stood and rolled his shoulders around. 'We'd better get moving.'

No explanation of where he'd been. Desmond looked at him, exhaustion the only expression left to him. He found he didn't really care where John Locke had been, he just wanted to arrive somewhere with food and rest. Maybe a drink. A drink would be good. Something strong. Preferably some of the good stuff.

'Where were you?' The woman in red asked in an acerbic tone.

Locke gave her a self-satisfied smile. 'I was hunting, came across a bunch of them and had to sit tight for a while. I came to find you as soon as I could.'

She narrowed her eyes and nodded once, then, as if an unspoken agreement passed between them, both Locke and the woman rose and started walking up the trail. Desmond painfully pulled himself upright and followed, struggling to catch up with Locke's easy stride.

'Hey, box man!' he panted when he'd caught up with him. 'Who is after us?'

'The Others.'

'_Others_?' The woman turned from her position at the head of the trio.

'The people who live on this Island. We've had problems with them. They've been taking our people, killing them.'

The woman nodded, then paused, leaning her head to one side as if listening. 'They follow us.'

'How far to the camp?' Desmond asked.

Locke squinted at the sky. 'Maybe another half a day.'

Desmond groaned inwardly and gritted his teeth, exertion beading the sweat on his forehead as he pushed his aching body harder, determined to keep up the relentless pace.

00000

'If you draw him out another foot I'll be able to get a clean shot.' Sawyer was frozen in place as he watched Starbuck squinting down the sights of the rifle. _Sniper rifle_ he amended. A hell of a lot more accurate. 'And he's bluffing about the President,' she added, speaking quietly over her shoulder, her eyes never leaving the figure of the Chief still standing in the Raptor's open hatch doorway. 'Just say the word and I'll take him.'

'No.' Apollo straightened and stood up. 'What if the President's really in there? And Elosha? There might be others too.'

_'Hostages_,' Starbuck spat disgustedly. 'I knew he was a Cylon. I fracking _knew _it.'

'If the Chief really is a Cylon then there'll be more inside.' the old Commander lifted his head up, his voice scratchy and hoarse as he slowly raised himself on one elbow. He'd been out for a good few hours now and Sawyer could see that even with all that he wasn't feeling so good.

Sawyer stood next to Juliet, neither of them moving. They both knew what Starbuck was capable of - Charlie's injuries were testament to that. But this time, the Chief was one of _them_. One of the military guys. Sawyer could sense the attention of the whole group of survivors now as they realized what was happening. Sawyer stood still and waited. He could feel Juliet next to him. She was trembling.

'So we find out if he's alone and then take him out,' Starbuck was saying matter-of-factly.

'If you kill him he'll download and then they'll be on us like a locust swarm,' came the Commander's gravelly reply.

'They probably already know we're here,' murmured Apollo, 'The Chief will have relayed our position the moment he got in the pilot seat. If he really is a Cylon,' he added.

There was a pause, no one speaking as they all watched the Chief disappear back inside the plane, causing a growl of frustration from Starbuck.

'Report.' the Commander said gruffly, sitting up higher and ignoring Apollo's frown of disapproval. Jack had been silently watching the whole exchange, probably not understanding a word of it, though he would have seen the look in Starbuck's eyes and recognized what that meant. Jack deflected attention onto himself as he boldly took a step forward and placed a reassuring hand on the Commander's arm.

'Easy. I'm a doctor. How about you let me take a look at you before we go any further.' He gave Apollo a pointed look as he let his eyes rest briefly on Starbuck before he returned his attention to his new patient. Apollo sighed, his jaw clenching, his look spearing Starbuck with tightly controlled anger. But he didn't move.

'I said report, Captain!' The Commander ignored Jack, brushing away his proffered hand and swaying alarmingly as he tried to get up.

Jack immediately stepped closer to take the weight. 'OK, so why don't we just lay you back down a moment and get you checked out, OK?'

With an angry mutter the Commander allowed himself to be carefully lowered back to the earth. 'Go see to the President.' He said firmly. 'I'm fine.'

'The _President_?' Sawyer watched in amusement as Jack turned questioningly to Apollo. _And here craziness begins_, Sawyer thought with wry amusement.

Apollo's reply was terse. 'President Laura Roslin. She took over after the attack.'

Jack frowned, 'Attack?' he asked. 'What attack?'

Juliet stepped forward, touching Jack's arm in a gesture that made Sawyer's hands clench. 'Jack, I'll see to him, you go to whoever's in that plane. The Company President,' she added with what Sawyer assumed was a flash of her own form of crazy. Sawyer gave her an amused grin as she stepped past him to get to the Commander.

'_The Company President?_' he murmured as she brushed past him, 'that was... _inventive_.'

She gave him a stressed, nervous look before she wiped her hands down her pants and bent down so that she was closer to eye level to the Commander. 'How are you doing?' she asked softly.

'I think I'm going to-' The Commander turned his head away from her and started retching onto the sand.

Juliet didn't move or flinch. Sawyer watched her, impressed. He'd have gotten right out of there. At least the puke missed her. 'Could you fetch us some water please?' she asked to anyone who was listening. Apollo nodded once and trotted off to the kitchen area, leaving Starbuck without a minder. 'It happened to me as well, the first time.' she was saying to the Commander. 'You should feel better in a little while. It'll go easier if you let yourself sleep it off,' she paused to take the water that Apollo had brought over. 'Here, drink this first,' The Commander took a couple of sips and then his head rested back down and his eyes closed. Within a few seconds Sawyer could see he'd passed out again.

By the time Sawyer turned back to the plane, Jack had made it to the hatch doorway. There was some sort of a debate going on with whoever was inside the plane. Sawyer frowned. Sayid joined them, more conversation that Sawyer frustratingly couldn't hear. He glanced over at Starbuck, alert as a feral hunting animal, her eyes still on the spot where she clearly hoped that the Chief would give her a clear shot. Apollo was still making no move to restrain her. After a moment Jack and Sayid went inside the plane. They came out, each of them carrying someone. Two women, by the look of them, cradled so that each man staggered slightly under the weight. Jack said something else over his shoulder and then walked determinedly to where the Commander lay under the shelter. He put the woman down gently and turned to where Sayid was doing the same, quickly checking the two women over before he shrugged and straightened up. 'They're fine. Knocked out, but fine. Could you keep an eye on them?' He looked at Juliet, who dragged a hand through her hair and nodded. She was clearly beyond exhausted. Sawyer felt a rush of anger that Jack was asking her to do anything. He took a step forward as Juliet dutifully checked each of the woman over, then sunk back on her heels, clearly coming to the same conclusion as Jack; they were fine. Juliet looked up at Sawyer, gave him a watery smile and then turned her attention back to the plane.

A group had gathered around the plane's ramp; Frogurt and a couple of others were already there, crowded around the hatchway, several suitcases sitting like obedient pets in the sand behind them. There were people more streaming past, dragging suitcases in the sand. It took Sawyer a moment to realize what was happening. Something inside of him snapped into awareness. He ran forward and caught up with Jack, the few paces making him breathless with adrenaline. 'Hey!' he grabbed him by the arm. 'What's going on?'

Jack frowned at him. 'We're getting out of here.'

Sawyer looked from the plane, already filling with Frogurt and the others, then to the beach, the sea. He took a deep breath. 'Are you sure that's a good idea?'

'Yes, Sawyer, I am. Now get out of my way.'

Sawyer took a step back and looked helplessly over at the plane. He trotted back to Juliet, still in the middle of the group of armed military. He caught her eye desperately and watched impatiently as she slowly leant back on her knees and stood up, giving Apollo a brief, reassuring smile. Then she came over, frowning. 'What's wrong?'

He nodded over at the plane, at the queue of crash survivors now milling around the gangway. 'They can't do this!'

She frowned.

'Juliet, they're going to be taken to a goddamn _spaceship_!' he hissed the last word with as much emphasis as he could and then halted, glaring at her, daring her to say he sounded dumb or crazy.

She paused, as if weighing up the situation. 'It's better than leaving them here to Ben.' She said finally.

He tried to breathe around the choking laugh in his throat. 'You serious?'

'So what are you going to do, James? Tell them all they can't go? What are you going to say to them?'

They were interrupted by the sight of Daniel Faraday striding toward the plane. 'No!' He was saying in a loud voice. 'You can't do this! You don't understand. You don't belong there!'

It was frightening to hear him shouting all the words that Sawyer wanted to say, and for him to sound so completely crazy when he said them. Faraday looked like a crazy guy. Sounded like a crazy guy. And everyone was ignoring him.

There were others now, their belongings quickly gathered, racing towards the plane. Jack walked through the crowd, followed closely by Sayid. Six or seven more people dragged their suitcases up the ramp and disappeared. Then the crowd stepped back as Jack and Sayid said something to whoever was inside. There was a pause while those left on the sand stood around for a moment and then moved away from the plane.

Sawyer over to Juliet. Her face was completely neutral, her whole body a pose of stillness and calm. The bodies of the two women were near the Commander. Apollo was standing nearby, Starbuck in an intense, whispered conversation next to him. Sawyer immediately clocked that Starbuck had stopped aiming the gun at the plane. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad. He looked around for Helo, but there was still no sign of him. He must be at the medical station. He guessed that he'd taken Sharon there to get away from any possible tensions and accusations from Starbuck. She was still wildly accusing everyone of being a Cylon.

'We need to get Charlie and the others from the medical station.' Jack was saying as he strode into the small group. Juliet nodded quickly, immediately about to turn go with him. She opened her mouth to say something but he put out a hand to stop her. 'Better if you stay here with these two. I'll make sure Sharon gets back OK.'

They were talking so intimately. At least Jack was the one hurrying away into the trees. Sawyer watched Jack's back for a while, making no effort to hide his look of disdain. When he turned back to Juliet she was back down next to the people laid out on the ground. As if she didn't know what was going on with them. As if they needed a doctor to help them through this. What the hell was she playing at? She'd been the one to tell him about the time shift, to tell him it was all real. And now she was suddenly pretending to be all dumb and playing along with Jack's little drama?

He didn't get it. Or he did. And that was what bothered him. Maybe she really liked Jack. Maybe that was it. Maybe she was choosing to play along, not because she believed in it but because she wanted Jack. And why not? They were both doctors, they shared all that money and privilege and fancy education. Next to Jack, he was dirt. And sure, she'd said all that stuff on the mining crate about how worthy he was. But here, the moment he got back on the Island, that was when it counted. And she'd made it clear where her real attention lay.

_Fine_.

So he'd just have to get over it and deal. Nothing new there.

He took a step back away from the group, starting as he realized that the plane was shut tight and ready for take-off. His mouth opened and he watched in horror as the plane suddenly took off. He twisted round in time to see it banking and flying away. He let out a gasp of something like a laugh; _a whole bunch of people from the Island had just been taken off in a space ship._

Well, he'd tried. It was out of his hands now. Daniel Faraday was sitting on his backside on the sand looking up at the sky, Penny stood dejectedly a little way off. He turned to the kitchen, not sure what to do now. If the whole of the beach camp took off on one of those things - including Juliet - what would he do? Seriously, it looked like that was going to happen. Would he stay on the Island? He looked nervously to where Juliet was crouched silently by the unconscious woman, then at the rest of the people in the camp. It looked like Frogurt's little coup had taken the rest of them by surprise as well. There was Rose's man with a delegation to talk to Apollo, asking what the hell was going on. Looked like Jack had been in such a hurry to get to Charlie he hadn't bothered to stop and explain it to anyone. But then when had he ever? You had to be in the inner circle to get a preview into the inside of Jack's mind. Sawyer turned away. He'd eat, wait. Then he'd see.


	98. Relay

Chapter 98

Relay

'What the hell happened here?' Saul's eyes opened wide in shock as he looked upon the scene inside the Raptor. Eleven bodies were slumped on the Raptor's floor and draped over suitcases and bags.

The Chief shrugged. 'They passed out when we made the jump.' He turned back to the control panel, powering down the Raptor with a deft sequence of switches and a final check on the augmented computer. He could sense Saul's confusion from the hatch door. The bodies lay heaped where they'd fallen; a whole cabin full of people who had dropped like lumps of rock the moment he'd made the jump. Saul was quickly scanning each body in turn. 'Where's the Commander?'

The Chief pushed up wearily from the pilot's seat and silently observed the pile of people at his feet. 'We'd better get these to the Doc.'

'The Commander? The President?' Saul insisted.

The Chief glanced around again, 'The President and Elosha went the same way as these. And the Commander... I didn't get to see him. Starbuck stood in front of the plane ready to shoot me from here to the next Basestar. I didn't even get past the hatch door.'

'What a fracking mess.' Saul took a step back onto the ramp and gave a curt command to one of the knuckledraggers before he turned back to the Chief. 'Where was Apollo?'

The Chief sighed. 'On the beach.'

'And he didn't stop her?'

The Chief almost laughed. Of course, in his role as the XO Saul had seen Apollo's primary role as keeping Starbuck in line. 'They think I'm a Cylon,' he said wearily, 'So what else do you expect them to do?'

There was a pause. 'What now?'

'I go back.'

'And Starbuck?'

'I'll think of something.'

Saul gave a snort of laughter and shook his head. 'Why are they making it so damn hard for us to help them? And who the hell are these people anyway?' he gestured to the bodies sprawled around them.

'Refugees. Or...'

'Or what?'

'Or people from whatever planet is at the other end of that EM wave disturbance.'

'Daniel Faraday,' Saul said quietly, remembering that part of Galen's memory from the link they had shared.

'Yeah.'

'So you think he's telling the truth?'

'From the readings I picked up from the Raider? Yes. Looks like these folks here are from another planet, maybe even another time.'

'Another _time_?'

'Maybe – at least that's what Faraday said, though I'd have to go through the EM readings with networked computers from a couple of Basestars to confirm it.'

'And you just thought it was a good idea to bring these people along?'

Galen dry scrubbed his face. 'I couldn't think of anything else to do with them.'

'Maybe we should take them back,' Saul said uncertainly.

'The Old Man thinks they're refugees who need to be evacuated. So I take them back, dump them on the beach and then what? There's no way the Old Man's going to believe it - he already thinks that Daniel Faraday is a Cylon. I figured it made more sense to play along.' He sighed. 'Either way, it's done now.'

'But if they've moved through _time_?' Saul persisted.

'Yeah. Paradoxes. Hell, I don't know. But they're here and so are we, and I figured that EM wave is something natural, so... '

They were interrupted as the medics came in at a run, pushing gurneys, solemn expressions on their faces. 'Tell the Doc they're refugees from Kobol.' Saul said to nearest nurse.

'Any sign of the Cylon fleet?' Galen asked quietly, letting the sound of the gurneys cover the conversation.

'Nothing. How long would the virus take to work?'

'I have no idea. Don't even know if it will work or what the effects will be. I guess we just have to wait. The sooner we can get the Commander back the sooner we can get out of here. I don't like staying in one place like this.'

'The Cylons know where we are – Cavil will have seen to that, I don't think locking him up will have prevented him telling his little buddies where we are.'

Galen had to admit that was probably true. But then where were they? Why were the Cylons holding back. Maybe they were waiting for orders from Cavil and while he was incommunicado in the brig the Cylons would keep their distance.

'You shouldn't go back there,' Saul said firmly, 'It's too dangerous and we need you here. We should send someone else.'

'There is no one else. There's something- ' The Chief paused, 'Something happens, looks like it happens the first time anyone jumps to that place or away from it.' He gestured to the people being loaded carefully onto the gurneys. 'Happened to me and Apollo and now the president and Elosha… I'm guessing it would be the same for any pilot that tried to go down there.' He gave a gesture of defeat. 'I'm the only one on this ship who could go without passing out the minute they jumped.'

They watched as the knuckledraggers cleared out the plane, hauling the bags and suitcases out and stacking them against one of the walls. The moment the Raptor was free the Chief took a step back toward the plane. Saul put a hand on his arm. 'You sure about this?' he murmured. 'We could just leave them there until all this is straightened out.'

The Chief paused, looking down for a moment, then smiled ruefully. 'It isn't safe down there. We can't leave them.'

'You can't be sure there's a resurrection ship in range-' Saul began.

'There's no resurrection ship.'

Saul sucked in a breath. 'Watch out for Starbuck. She'll shoot first, think later.'

The Chief ignored the comment and strode purposefully towards the plane.

The turn-around must have taken no more than a half hour. He could have hurried it along but he didn't want to draw attention to the way that he was breaking all protocol by taking the Raptor out on his own. No point trying to explain that anyone else who tried to jump to 'Kobol' would end up face-planting the floor. He silently said a prayer before he activated the jump drive, coming to full alert as the familiar blue of the sea and sky immediately filled his view screen. The Raptor was handling well, he thought with relief. Looks like he would make the second landing without any problems.

He hadn't had time to formulate any sort of plan beyond getting down there and trying to show that he was acting like enough of a good guy for Apollo to restrain Starbuck so that he could talk his way out of getting shot. For a moment he wished he had programmed the Raider to do this trip, sent it down empty and let whoever felt like it hitch a ride back to Galactica, pick up one of the Raptors and then ferry the refugees (or whoever they were) back to Galactica. Only problem was it wouldn't work. The Raptor he was flying was only making the trip because he had completely rewritten its code, was interfacing with it to the point where he could fly it around a paper bag. No Raptor pilot could do it – he'd made it far too responsive. A viper pilot would be used to that sort of quick reaction flying – it would take a pilot like Apollo or Starbuck, perhaps the Commander if he still remembered how to fly, but certainly one of the regular Raptor pilots would struggle trying to land the thing safely. There were too many forces acting on the plane as it came out of the EM wave and the Island seemed to act like some sort of magnet. A viper pilot was used to compensating at speed. They'd already lost three Raptors and they couldn't afford to lose any more.

A Raptor could hold ten or so extra bodies, and Galen had counted at least thirty people on the beach - he knew there were more squirreled away in some other bunker, and that was without counting in Adama, Laura Roslin, Elosha and the others. So maybe another five trips or so. Did they have time for five more trips? From what Daniel Faraday had said, the EM wave was fading, time was running out. The question was, how fast?

He concentrated as he brought the Raptor into a rough landing on the beach, jouncing alarmingly as it hit the sand. He felt his heart racing as it finally came to a stop. He didn't even power down this time, just got himself out of the cockpit so that Starbuck couldn't shoot him through the glass. He figured that she would at least wait until he had landed safely in order to make sure she didn't damage the plane, but once they had landed it could well be open season on suspected Cylons. He opened the hatch door and stood just inside as he took out a sidearm and waited.

It didn't take long. Thirty seconds tops and he counted eight hot and puffing civilians, suitcases on wheels rumbling up the ramp. The Chief waited, not saying anything. They stood crowded inside, the front ranks watching him for a moment as they noticed the gun in his hand. Then one of them, an older man, took a step forward and gave him a conspiratorial smile, 'Apollo took the gun away from Starbuck,' he said. 'I'm Bernard by the way. Don't think we got introduced before. I'm not staying, but I just wanted to wish you all the best.' He clapped a hand on Galen's shoulder and then headed out of the plane, turning to help load the luggage once he was back on the sand and waving goodbye to those who were still in the plane.

The Chief let out a sigh and got ready to return to the cockpit as the last suitcase was pushed inside. Something caught his attention and he hesitated at a flurry of movement just outside his vision. Everyone turned toward two figures who were making their way slowly up the ramp. Galen sucked in a breath as he saw Boomer coming slowly up the ramp, draped over Apollo's shoulder. She was walking hesitatingly, her weight resting on Apollo's as shuffled into the body of the plane.

Apollo hesitated, letting his eyes roam over the Chief and then pointedly ignoring him, pushing past to place Boomer gently in the co-pilot's seat and then deftly clipping her in. 'She'll be more secure here,' he said quietly and then turned to the others in the plane. 'Alright folks, settle down. You'll find straps beside the drop down seats, I suggest you strap yourselves in, this may be a bumpy ride.' he glanced over to the pilot seat. 'Let's go, Chief,' he said.

Galen hesitated and then slipped into the pilot's seat, closing the hatch and getting the Raptor off the sand in one quick maneuver, spinning the plane just above the sand so that the cockpit was no longer facing the people on the beach. Whatever that guy Bernard had said, Apollo had arrived with Boomer and no gun, which meant Starbuck was left on the beach with that rifle ready to take pot shots at him. For all he knew this was a setup, with Apollo all ready to take over when he was incapacitated or dead. He glanced back, checking quickly to see if Apollo was armed. He didn't appear to be, but Galen knew he could easily have a weapon concealed somewhere.

Boomer looked like shit. She sat in the co-pilot's seat in her uniform, strapped in and barely conscious. Whatever they'd given her for the fever hadn't been enough. The girl was burning up. As they banked away he did a small, tight circuit of the Island, giving Apollo time to make his move if he was going to. Apollo had taken up position at the ECO station. Why had he brought Boomer onto the plane? She was either a hostage or a peace offering, he decided. Or both. Either way he would rather she weren't there, not until this was straightened out, and certainly not while Apollo was sitting behind them. But Apollo seemed to be settling the people down rather than stabbing or shooting him. He hoped that Apollo had figured out that their priority had to be to get back to Galactica in one piece in the only plane they had that could safely make this trip. Once they were there, Galen still held the ace. At the end of their journey was Saul, acting commander of the ship, and whatever Apollo had planned to do with him, son of the Commander or not, Saul outranked him.

Galen banked around, glancing back to find Apollo getting into position at the ECO station. Another minute and he'd get the jump drive spooled up and hopefully confirm the coordinates Galen had already typed in. In the meantime Galen did a full scan of the atmosphere, figuring that Doc Cottle would want to know if he needed to quarantine everyone. He paused when he saw the atmospheric readings, taking another turn around to get a second look. The place was leaking poison. Some sort of nerve agent. He wasn't familiar with the exact compound but he recognized enough of the constituent parts to have some idea about its affects - especially on pregnant women.

'I should be flying.' He turned to see Apollo at his shoulder. Galen glanced uneasily over to Boomer and then back to Apollo.

'I got this,' Galen said quietly.

'You're not a pilot,' Apollo said levelly.

Galen licked his lips nervously. 'I made a few... adjustments to the plane,' he explained simply, 'I don't know if we'd get back safely without me flying it.' He left out the part about being a far more experienced pilot that Apollo could imagine. Over the years, he'd probably clocked up more flying hours than Starbuck, Apollo and the Old Man combined.

'How do I know you aren't just going to take all your Cylon friends here to the nearest Cylon basestar-'

'Look, Captain, if that is what you think, then why are you here?'

'To stop you.'

He adjusted the yaw of the plane and took another turn around the Island. 'These people aren't Cylons, OK? And I'm not what you think I am.'

'But you are a Cylon.'

'No.'

'No?'

'No.' It was kind of a lie, but he wasn't a Cylon in the way Apollo thought he was, and right now he had to buy enough time to get them back to Galactica in one piece. 'I'm as human as you are.' _And a little bit more..._

He could tell Apollo wasn't happy with that. 'You're lying.' He said flatly.

'No. I just don't have time to give you the whole story. When we drop these off on Galactica and go back and get the Commander, _then _we can all have a talk, OK?'

'Fine. But I fly the plane.'

He heaved out a long sigh. 'Like I said. You can't. I rigged it so that I was the only one who could fly it.'

Apollo's jaw twitched in irritation. It was clear he didn't believe him, didn't believe any of it.

'Is there a reason we've flown around the Island three times now?' asked one of the passengers.

Apollo stood motionless for a moment and then moved back to the ECO station. Galen waited until he could see on his panel that Apollo had finished spooling up the FTL… he checked to see if Apollo had tampered with the coordinates that Faraday had given them. He hadn't. Maybe he recognized the numbers as the same ones that Faraday had given them and had gotten him and Starbuck safely back to Galactica in the Raider…'Jumping in three, two one-'

'Galactica, this is Raptor 502 requesting permission to land.' Galen trotted out the sequence of call and answer automatically. He'd heard it broadcast so often from the tinny speakers in the hanger bay that he could recite it all in his sleep. Felix Gaeta was on the Com. Good. The boy at least had some sense. Things sounded normal enough. Which meant that Saul was still OK and no one had guessed who he was. Or more to the point, Cavil hadn't managed to alert the sleeper-agents and other Cylons in his fleet and break himself out of there and take over the ship. In some ways Galen was glad to have Apollo with him; the boy had a level head on his shoulders and was an excellent field commander. Plus Galen knew what side Apollo would be on. With the Cylon models - even Boomer - he couldn't be sure.

They weren't even in the landing bay before their little gaggle of beach survivors began to collapse. Most of them had been subdued during the flight; they'd turned up in their skimpy clothes, barely any possessions between them, sat where Apollo had directed them, wide eyed and shocked with. They had probably expected a longer flight, not just one FTL jump, but now, seconds later, here they were. Some of them got a good view of Galactica through the view screen and there were gasps of amazement before they passed out. Either they were appalled at the look of the ancient spaceship in front of them or impressed. He couldn't tell which.

'Why are they doing this?' Apollo was now surrounded by slumped, unconscious forms.

The Chief looked round. '' 'I did a scan of the Island. It's polluted. Some sort of nerve gas compound; maybe that's what's causing it, though it doesn't explain why this only seems to happen the first time anyone jumps to or from that Island.'

Apollo was silent for a moment. 'Daniel Faraday said it was the brain dealing with the shift in space and time.' he said quietly.

Galen looked at him in surprise. 'I didn't think you believed him.'

Apollo shrugged non committally. 'He also said was Earth.'

Galen hesitated. He could see now that Apollo wasn't taking the same line as either Starbuck or his father. He measured his words, watching Apollo carefully for his reaction. 'Faraday was right about the EM wave. I took readings from both the Raptor and the Cylon Raider. According to both of them the wave takes us through space time.'

'So that might be Earth.' Apollo said, almost to himself.

'In some other time frame, yes.'

'But these people?'

'I have no idea. They could genuinely be refugees caught in the EM wave like we were, or they could be from – I don't know.' He shook his head slightly and then turned to Boomer. She was still awake. Barely. Her eyes were bloodshot and feverish, her skin clammy. He had to get her to the Doc. He looked through the front of the cockpit and guessed that the medics had already been called.

'I still don't get it,' Apollo was saying, 'None of this makes sense,'

Galen paused. There wasn't much to say to that. 'Look, all we can do is get everyone off of there and go back for the Old Man and the others. That's what I intend to do, unless of course you decide to put me in the brig again? I'm guessing those were your orders.'

'Something like that.'

'So what are you going to do, Captain?'

Apollo watched him steadily but didn't say anything.

Finally Galen spoke. 'I'm taking this Raptor back to pick up the next group of survivors. It would make sense for you to bring another one along. I can fix it so that it handles enough like a viper for you to be able to fly the thing in without crashing it. There isn't much time.' He added. 'I've seen the readings from the Raider. Daniel Faraday is right; looks like we're piggybacking on an EM wave. That's how we're being taken right out of this sector to that Island. And he's right that the hole is closing. So make up your mind, Captain. You can help me or get in the way. In either case Starbuck and the Commander are still down there, along with all those civilians.'

Galen turned as the first of the medics came up the ramp. Galen remained in the pilot's seat, watching as Apollo moved a little to the side.

'Where's the President? Why wasn't I informed that she was leaving the ship?' Apollo stiffened as Gaius Baltar's voice drifted up the gang plank. Galen sighed and pushed himself wearily off the seat.

Apollo stepped forward, taking the Vice President to one side. 'Everything is under control here, Mr Vice President. The president is fine. She and the Commander wished to stay behind so that these people could be evacuated as quickly as possible.'

Baltar was starting to say something else when Apollo cut him off. Before he could decide to accuse him of being a Cylon, Galen pushed through the medics and started to issue orders to his ground crew. He would bluff and hope that Apollo would keep quiet until Saul showed up. 'Get Boomer out of the co-pilot seat, and help get these people out of rest of you stop gawking and get to work.' Two of his deck crew stepped forward to do the usual diagnostic on the Raptor and he stepped forward quickly to stop them. 'I'm taking this one right out again, so just check for fuel, OK?' The last thing he needed was to have them discovering how much he'd tampered with the onboard computer.

Apollo was frowning, looking around the hanger bay as if a whole cohort of Centurions were about to jump out from the store rooms. Galen moved next to him. 'We'll need another raptor if we're to get them all out of there.' He said quietly and curtly to him, 'I'll fix up that one over there.'

Apollo was still looking around the hanger deck. 'Where's the Raider?' He said suddenly.

Galen sighed. Why was Apollo so goddamned perceptive? Thankfully the Doc chose that moment to stride into the hanger deck, three of his nursing staff in tow. 'Hey, hey, who said you could move these people? They're not sacks of potatoes. No, you! Leave them there.'

'Sir.' The Chief stepped forward. 'I have to get them out of the Raptor as fast as possible. There are more to evacuate.'

'You'll get them out as fast as I tell you to get them out. Now wait. Here, let me-'

The Chief got out of the way, relief filling his mind as he saw Saul arriving. He hesitated and then saluted smartly. 'Sir!'

Saul looked around at the unconscious bodies and frowned. 'The Commander?'

'Not yet. We have Apollo and I've suggested that once I fix up another Raptor he can go down and help evacuate those who are left.'

Saul gave a grunt of approval.

The chief turned in time to see Boomer being carefully carried out by a nurse. He swallowed uneasily.

'So what happened to the Raider?' Apollo's words were ice.

The Chief glanced uneasily over at Saul. 'I planted a virus in it and then sent it back to the Cylons.'

Apollo looked startled for a moment. 'A virus?'

'That's right, Captain.'

'Does my father know about this?'

'That's classified,' Saul said hurriedly.

Galen winced. Apollo wasn't going to buy that. Galen looked to see that the Raptor had been emptied and turned to go back inside. It would be quicker if he re-calibrated the computer link with this one and set it up so that Apollo could fly it and then go fix up another for himself. The faster they got Apollo out of there the better.

He stopped at the bottom of the ramp and turned back to Saul 'I suggest you put a guard on Boomer, Sir,' he said quietly, but loud enough so that Apollo could here. Saul looked surprised, then nodded.

Apollo hesitated and Saul stepped smoothly into the breach. 'Take this Raptor, we need to get the Commander and the President evacuated as fast as possible.

Apollo's eyes narrowed slightly and he looked for a moment like he was going to kick off.

'Our priority is to get the commander back here as soon as possible,' Saul said firmly.

'What about an ECO?'

'Looks like you're on your own. From what we can tell, only you and the Chief here can go down there without passing out..'

Apollo watched as two armed guards escorted Boomer's gurney out of the hanger deck. Satisfied that the Cylon threat was being taken seriously, he nodded to Saul and walked up the ramp to the plane.


	99. Gone

Chapter 99

Gone

Penny stood alone in the middle of the crowded beach and wondered when her life had started ripping itself to shreds. When Desmond had gone to join the army? When he'd come back only to disappear in front of her eyes a few hours later? Or was it when Eloise had slunk into her sitting room, with her tall tales of space ships and Eloctromagnetic Radiation and slipstreams that travelled through time? No. It was Daniel who had punctured it all. The brother she'd never known. This stranger in front of her that had pulled at her heart in a different way and turned everything she had known on its head with his madness and his genius.

Before he had come into her life she'd known how things worked. She'd been a sane, rational, competent person. The world had worked. And now? She stared hopelessly around at the beach, at the people over at the camp, the buzz of activity as they gathered their things, at the soldiers and the two new women in the shade under the tree, at the space where the strange helicopter had taken off, it's engine making the oddest noise she had ever heard; it had been eerily quiet, the loudest sound the whine of air motion as it moved. She had thought of it as a helicopter, but there were no rotors, more of a silent jump jet than anything. To her it had seemed utterly strange and alien. As far as she could see no one else had noticed. None of these others seemed to think anything of it. Except for Daniel; on his knees on the sand, staring up despairingly at the spot where the plane had disappeared over the trees.

If Daniel was right, then the people from the beach camp were going through the EM hole and into another time and place. They were going to end up on a space ship somewhere. It had seemed almost quaint and exciting when she'd had glimpses of this reality from her sitting room at home in London. No so much now. Now it seemed terrifyingly disorienting and out of control. Penny was quite sure that this wasn't supposed to happen. Whatever reality Eloise had planned to shape on the Island, Penny was certain it didn't entail either her or Daniel entering the EM wave. Eloise had killed Daniel here on the Island, so whatever changes had to happen should surely happen here. But Daniel was unaware of the two journals, and since Eloise had never told him what had happened in her past, Daniel had no idea how to avoid it.

One good thing was that he didn't seem enthusiastic about going in one of those planes. The bad thing was that everything was happening so fast that time for decisions and guns and soldiers threatened to leave them without a choice. It had all happened so quickly. One moment the plane had landed, the next a whole group of the beach people had squeezed themselves into the helicopter plane and taken off. Daniel had barely had time to begin to remonstrate with them. And yes, his warnings had sounded like the ravings of a mad man. _Her brother._ Was that why she had kept quiet? Should she have at least backed him up? Probably. Eloise would have certainly thrown herself behind her son. But she hadn't, she'd kept quiet. Some still small voice of doubt, or confusion, or maybe just not wanting to have a gun pointed at her again. Daniel didn't seem to care about the guns. He looked past them to the bigger picture, the bigger disaster unfolding in his mind.

She turned away.

She shouldn't have listened to Eloise in the first place. The woman was ruthless and Penny was quite sure that Eloise's plan contained a far more sinister edge than the older woman had revealed to her. She was quite sure that Eloise hadn't told her the whole story. Eloise had definitely stayed resolutely tight-lipped about Penny's father and his intentions and involvement with this Island. There were too many secrets, and Penny knew that Eloise had no affection for her and saw her as little more than a pawn in her attempt to save Daniel. To that end she would throw anyone else in the fire. _And here she was._

She'd only come here for Desmond, she reminded herself. Ultimately she was here because that strange man, Richard Alpert, had come and told her that she had to be here to save Desmond. But he wasn't here either. She felt the thick feeling of tears in her gut and the stinging in her eyes as she tried to swallow down the feeling of hopelessness and despair. They'd all been lying. All of them. The only one she had been inclined to believe was Daniel, and that was because his transparent craziness had brooked no deceit. Even that had faded and now she barely knew who he was. He certainly had not recognized her at all. She was alone. Totally alone. The tears came hotter and harder now and she took a few steps towards the water to try to hide them from the rest of the people in the camp. She didn't like crying uncontrollably in front of strangers.

00000

Sawyer watched as the Raptor took off again, another load of gullible beach campers onboard. They seemed so eager. They had no idea what they were getting into. Or where they were going. And no one seemed to be disputing what was happening. Frogurt had gone with the first contingent, Hurley just now with Racetrack, Clare and Aaron and the two unconscious women. Apollo had come back this time, landing the plane in a haphazard, awkward maneuver. It looked for a moment there like there'd be another crash landing, but somehow the plane righted itself at the last moment and it bumped uneasily onto the sand. Apollo'd had a curt conversation with Adama and then taken him and Starbuck with him, and now there were none of Galactica's military left on the beach. Helo was somewhere - probably still at the medical station with Sharon, but given his connection with her he was nearly all the way to being a Cylon machine - which meant that in all practical senses they had all gone; all the ones that seemed to matter, anyway. Sawyer wondered if any of them would bother coming back now. Maybe that was that. Frogurt, Hurley, Clare and the others would have their wacky space adventure and the rest of them would be left on the Island in peace. Or as much peace as Ben would allow them. Sawyer looked uneasily over to where Juliet was still standing watching the plane bank and then do the weird disappearing thing. She didn't blink as it winked out of existence, the sky suddenly clear. Instead she turned slowly, somehow aware that he was watching her, and gave him a tired smile.

He felt relief wash over him. They were OK.

Daniel Faraday was still staring dejectedly up at the sky. The new woman, Penny, didn't seem much better, standing gazing out over the surf, her back a study in wretched misery. Sawyer had to admit that he too felt strangely empty; the camp was suddenly silent. Bernard and Rose were still here, he realized, though Sun and Jin had gone. They must have slipped onto one of the earlier planes, though Sawyer couldn't remember seeing them go. He took a good look around. He felt strangely separate from the whole scene, like he wasn't really there. Like he was watching it all from the outside. One thing was sure, he was glad he hadn't gotten on that plane. He'd seen enough of where they were going and it was too weird, too scary to go back there. The sight of the shiny metal robot and the girl in the bath tub flashed immediately into his mind. Yeah. Too crazy. He turned as Juliet sunk down wearily onto the sand. She looked exhausted. 'You want something to drink?' he asked her, gesturing awkwardly toward the kitchen area. He realized he didn't know how to talk to her anymore. It was like there was some invisible barrier between them now, something indefinable but big enough to stop them ever reaching each other.

She opened one eye and smiled again, making his heart lift enough to return the smile. A yes then. Yes was good. He made his way quickly to the kitchen area and fetched a bottle, bending down to fill it from the rain water tarp. He wondered what would happen if one of the planes did come back. What would Juliet do? Stay? Leave? Did it matter?He felt his guts twist. He capped the bottle and took it over to her, standing uncomfortably while she drank it. He suddenly didn't know what to say. Were they good? He wanted to sit down next her, talk like they used to, sit close. But there was an awkwardness now and he didn't know what it meant or what to do about it. He stood there a moment, held in indecision. He was almost about to go sit next to her when she heaved herself upright and dusted the sand off of her pants. 'I'm going to talk to Daniel Faraday,' she said quietly. 'Looks like he's the one who knows what's really going on here.'

Sawyer winced as she brushed past him, sighing in frustration as she motioned to Daniel Faraday and they walked a little ways off their head close in a murmured conversation that he couldn't hear. He waited, watching with growing unease as Daniel became more animated, waving his arms and leaning into her personal space in a way that Sawyer didn't like at all. Juliet seemed fine with it though, earnestly replying to whatever he was saying and Sawyer felt utterly shut out of her thoughts, her life, her intentions. It was over, he realized. She was making her own life now, her own plans. And he wasn't privy to them. He wasn't part of them. The hollow feeling in his chest came back. Things had been bad since they had gotten back here. She was closing him down. Every little exchange was a goodbye, a little more distance, a little more coldness and formality. She was pushing herself away from him and there was squat he could do about it.

Everything felt wrong. Even the goddamn beach felt wrong – too quiet, too empty. He gotten used to the background movement, all those people who'd annoyed him to the point where he hadn't even bothered learning their names. He hadn't spoken to half of them and this time yesterday he would have said that he couldn't care if they came or went. But now he realized that they had been a comforting reminder of normality. Now that they were gone the place seemed more menacing. What would happen if no more planes came back? How would it be with Jack and Kate and- he stopped that thought dead and sighed. It was all a mess.

He looked back over to where Juliet was still deep in conversation with Daniel. Daniel looked like he was cross-examining her or something. Sawyer hoped she was lying. He had no idea why, he just sensed that in all of this the truth was the last thing he wanted thrown around.

There was sound in the bushes at the edge of the beach camp and he turned quickly, squinting over to see movement among the trees. He was half way reaching for the gun in the back of his pants when he recognized them, the sweating figures of Sayid, Jack, Kate and Helo struggling with the four arms of a stretcher. Sharon was walking a little behind them, looking strained and tired but still moving.

Juliet must have seen them as well because she immediately broke off her conversation with Daniel Faraday and hurried toward them, meeting the ragged group just as Bernard and Rose came up from their little campsite. Sawyer sighed and then reluctantly jogged up to join them, pausing a moment when he saw how Juliet immediately went to Jack's side. He stopped stock still as the stretcher came level and then let it move past him. Jack ignored him and focused completely on Juliet. Charlie was there on the stretcher, unconscious or sleeping, his face shaded by the overhanging trees. He didn't look good. He was pale and looked a few shades away from a corpse. Looked like he needed more blood. Even with a few pints of Jack's blood inside him it still wasn't enough. He looked up as Kate came level with him, struggling with the rearmost arm of the stretcher. He leant over and in an easy movement put his hand on the pole, giving Helo a curt nod as he took up the strain.

'Did we make it in time?' Kate asked breathlessly, rubbing the stiffness out of her arms while she anxiously scanned the empty beach.

Sawyer shrugged. 'The last plane took off with Starbuck and the rest of them. No idea if they are going to be sending anymore.'

Kate started to speak, 'Do you think-?'

Helo spoke up. 'Two O'clock,' was all he said. Kate looked around confusion. 'There's your ride,' Helo nodded up at the sky to the speck growing larger on the horizon.

Sawyer felt the stretcher pull and with a grunt of irritation he staggered slightly as Jack and Sayid moved off the sand dunes and stepped onto the beach. He recovered his balance, gritted his teeth and kept on moving. The four of them, carried the stretcher quickly toward where the plane was already landing. Sawyer could just about see the figure of the Chief inside the cockpit. At least he didn't have to dodge Starbuck now. Juliet had dropped back to talk to Sharon and they were still deep in conversation as Sawyer and the others approached the plane. Kate had peeled off and was rushing back to the makeshift camp. He turned to see her grabbing a comb, shampoo, what looked like a knife and a bag which he knew held a false passport and papers. He half smiled at that before Jack's voice made him turn back to the stretcher and negotiate the ramp up into the plane.

The stretcher fit snugly along one wall of the plane, the Chief expertly securing it by placing it into clips designed for it. Sawyer remembered that they had gotten the stretcher out of one of the crashed Raptors, so no surprise it fitted. Once the stretcher was in place everyone hopped down and hurried back to their shelters to grab passports and papers whatever else they were going to take with them. Not that their passports would do anything. Juliet was still on the beach and stepped back to let them pass and then started to follow Sharon up the ramp. He grabbed her by the hand. 'You're still going?'

'Yeah.'

'Right.' His mouth felt like cardboard. He let go of her hand.

'I'm a doctor, James,' she said to him, 'And Sharon and Charlie are my patients.'

It was a thin and cruel excuse and they both knew it. He looked into her face, searching for something. Juliet had her game face on, the impassive mask that even he couldn't penetrate. He felt the bitter questions rising up like bile, the conversation he couldn't have, not here, not now. Probably not ever. What was it he used to say? 'If you have to ask, the answer's no.' ? And if you had to beg and plead and go down on your goddamn knees to ask if she still loved you, still cared, still saw you as someone worth something? Simple answer: _no._

'I need to go on this one,' she was saying, looking sideways at the others hurrying up the ramp and crowding in behind her within earshot of everything she was saying. He clamped his jaw shut and took a step back.

'Are you staying?' She asked uncertainly.

'Yeah. There's no reason for me not to is there?' He said bitterly. He threw it at her like an angry retort but also like a lifeline, still hoping that she would grab hold of it. He glanced up to see her watching him, her eyes with that blue intensity he'd never been able to hide from.

She didn't say anything for a moment and he started to turn away before he had to hear the words. She took a breath. 'Look, James-' but whatever she was going to say was gone when Jack's outline emerged from inside the plane. It didn't matter. He had already started to move away from her. He didn't want to hear it. He still had some pride. Whatever had happened on that mining crate had been because they'd been trapped together in a small space and - well, he hadn't been himself either. He took another step back, mentally closing himself off as he could see Jack's bulk loomed larger, a sweaty hand placed firmly on Juliet's shoulder as he steered her inside, giving Sawyer a significant look as she obediently let herself be led.

'You need to wait for the next plane, Sawyer,' Jack said firmly, nodding once before the hatch door closed. Through the hatch door Sawyer could see into the plane; Helo at the ECO controls, Sharon strapped into the cockpit next to the Chief, the others crowded in the back, fitting in around Charlie's stretcher, Juliet calmly clipping herself into one of the seats, Jack leaning over her, obscuring her from him. He caught a last glance of Kate's puzzled expression as the hatch door closed, blocking them all from sight.

'Yeah,' he muttered, 'I'll just get the next one.' He ignored the bitter taste in his mouth and the whine as the plane prepared to take off. He refused to stand there pathetically as the plane rose into the sky; he forced himself to walk stiffly back to his tree where his book still lay face down, open at the page. He couldn't remember the story, and the sight of it brought a sudden rush memories; of himself and Juliet, the books that they had shared, her expression when she'd stolen them from Helo's locker. He saw her laughing, slapping him playfully on the arm when he described the plot of some book he'd read. He bitterly shook the images out of his head. It didn't matter now. He could hear the plane taking off. She was gone. Did she think he was following? Did she really think he was going to get on the next plane? Hell, they didn't even know if there was going to be a next plane. He took a deep, slow breath, willing the sting behind his eyes to go away. No. That was it. That was goodbye. Not the best he'd ever had. Not the worst either. Maybe she thought she would see him again. Maybe she thought he wasn't going to stay. Well, she should know him better than that.

He mentally counted off who was left on the beach; Rose, Bernard, Penny and Daniel. That made five of them. He looked over to Daniel, a stunned expression as he stared at the place in the sky where the plane had disappeared. Sawyer didn't try to puzzle out what was going through his head, he was done with figuring this whole thing out. Done with all of it. Like Juliet was done with him. He remembered her expression as she stood in the plane's doorway; determination, annoyance, pity. Had it really been pity? Had she felt sorry for him? And that look to Jack, the way she had stepped back and allowed him to take over, pushing them apart like she was his pet. No, Juliet had made it quite clear where things stood between them. Or who. If that was how she was going to let him down, then fine. He'd take it. No problem.

Sawyer stretched stiffly and dusted down his jeans, brushing off the sand that always clung to them here at the camp. The slightest breeze blew the dry sand everywhere and his mouth was permanently full of little bits of grit. A cold beer, that's what he needed. A whole line of them. He'd find out what was left of the liquor stash, get himself drunk, forget all about it, forget all about _her_. Maybe it was dumb to stay here on the Island, maybe not, but one thing was clear; going back to the space ship Galactica would be a mistake. All his instincts told him that. His chances of survival were way better here on the Island. He hadn't planned on fetching up like Robinson Crusoe, but then he hadn't planned on fetching up here at all. At least the crazy stuff would stop once Apollo and his bunch of misfits went away. Then things could get back to normal. Him against the world; that was the best way. _That_ was the way it had always been and that was the way it was now. No more complications.


	100. Up

Chapter 100

Up

The weather was closing in, clouds looming on the horizon spelling rain. Sawyer looked uneasily at the roughly tied tarp above his newest home. He had cobbled together a couple of the other more robust shelters but hadn't had time to fix it up properly. His stuff was going to get wet. He peered up at the dark clouds massing above him, up and beyond them to the piece of sky where her plane would have vanished. He wondered what she was doing now. Probably playing perfect doctor with Jack. Well, let them. He eyed the sky suspiciously for another second and then turned to see which of the other abandoned homes would make the better shelter for him while he waited this one out. He could fix up a better, bigger place for himself once the rain had gone.

Apollo's plane must have landed sometime between him struggling with the tarp in the rising wind and managing to wrestle it to the ground and weigh it down with someone's abandoned books and suitcases. Sawyer figured it must have been no more than ten minutes or so since that last plane had taken off. Apollo must have dumped his load of beach campers and came right on back. When he straightened and turned it was there on the beach and Apollo was already out of the hatch and striding purposefully down the ramp. Sawyer looked around, quickly locating everyone else; Rose and Bernard were in their shelter, Daniel Faraday was in the kitchen area and Penny was still paddling in the surf at the edge of the beach. Sawyer wondered who, if any, would get on this next flight. _The last flight_, he reminded himself.

Sawyer glanced briefly over to Apollo and then turned back to his misbehaving tarp. The rain would be on them before he had a hope in hell of getting it fixed up. He'd better get all the stuff under the darn thing rather than let it all sit on top of it. The books he'd used to weigh it all down were someone's discarded chic lit. Not the greatest of read. Still, he was sure he'd get right around to reading them and if he was bored enough he'd savor every word. He bent down and slipped the books under the tarp, scouting round for a couple of heavier rocks to weigh down the flapping plastic. He would make a palace out of all the discarded stuff here - a huge shelter with rooms and maybe a table or something.

'I said _no_! And if you knew anything you would be bringing all those people back.' Daniel Faraday's voice rose up, caught by the wind but still audible over the camp. Sawyer glanced up and smiled. Apollo was trying to get Daniel to go with him. Apollo's words were softer, snatched away by the wind. Sawyer shook his head and got back to work, trotting over to his old stash and grabbing whatever would suffer from getting wet. It felt good, this. A sudden sense of liberation, this new feeling of freedom and independence. He hadn't realized how uptight he'd been, constantly aware of Jack breathing down his neck or on edge about what Sayid was going to do next. And even Juliet... He halted a sudden rush of feeling that almost took his breath away. OK, so Juliet was going to take a little longer.

'Like I said, I'm stayin,' Rose's voice carried suddenly, and he realized she was having to shout over the wind. He looked over to see a frustrated Apollo hovering in the kitchen area, clearly anxious to be up and gone. He was looking uneasily around at the sky. Sawyer guessed he didn't want to fly out in a rainstorm. 'Me and Bernard,' she was saying, now holding her hat with one hand, using the other to wave in the vague direction of the beach camp, 'This'll do just fine for us.'

Sawyer moved up to the kitchen area, grabbing a beer and popping the tab, leaning against a tree a few feet away to watch the exchange.

'It's not safe,' Apollo was saying, 'You're not the only people on this Island.'

'Well, we know that, but I think me and Bernard are old enough to know how to keep ourselves out of trouble.'

Apollo hesitated, frowning, and then said, 'The Chief said it was contaminated with some sort of nerve agent. It looks like the place is poisoned.'

Rose drew herself up a little, 'Well, whatever it is that's poisoning me, then get me some more of it, I've never been so healthy!'

Apollo gritted his jaw in exasperation and then turned and gestured to Penny, now moving slowly toward them, her face pinched and her eyes red rimmed like she'd been crying. 'You?' he asked her, not bothering to reiterate what it was he was asking. Sawyer realized that he had no clue how Penny fitted into the whole picture. She had just shown up in that life raft, terrified, and then stood silent as a corpse looking bedraggled and out of place. Still, the way she was standing near Daniel Faraday and her haunted dead expression told him she had decided she was staying too. She glanced over to Faraday and didn't say anything.

'This is your last chance,' Apollo said, 'When I'm gone, that's it.'

She gave Daniel Faraday another quick glance and then shook her head. 'I'm staying with Daniel,' she said firmly.

'Sawyer?'

'Reckon I'll be stay'n too,' he said evenly.

Apollo hesitated and then turned back to Faraday. 'You say this is Earth?' he asked pointedly.

Faraday's eyes narrowed but he nodded.

'Can you at least draw me a map of where Galactica is in relation to Earth?'

'What you talking about?' Rose interjected. _'Earth_?'

Daniel Faraday ignored her and shook his head. 'No time. If you want to be sure about getting back you should have left about five minutes ago.'

Apollo hesitated barely a split second before his gun was out and pointing at Daniel. 'Then you're going to have to come with me.'

Sawyer had Helo's gun out from the back of this pants and cocked and ready before Apollo had realized what was happening. 'You're letting us all stay here.' Sawyer said quietly, not hiding the menace in his voice. 'You can either wait for your map or get out now, but no one is going anywhere unless they want to.'

It took Apollo a couple of seconds to weigh up his options before he slowly put his gun back in its holster and backed off a couple of paces. Sawyer couldn't read his expression as he turned slowly and began to walk stiffly toward the plane.

It was then that the rain began. The clouds had been darkening throughout the exchange but now the first drops started to fall, huge stinging slaps that hurt as they landed. After the first few drops it started coming down in sheets, hard heavy rain that drenched them in an instant. Apollo glanced up worriedly and then started jogging toward the plane's open hatch. Visibility was right down, and Sawyer could barely make out the gray shape of the plane about fifty yards up the beach. He waited, eyes intent on Apollo's receding form, making sure that he didn't change his mind and come back for any of them.

There was the crack of thunder, then another, then something that sounded like the sound of a gunshot - or was it thunder? - coming from the jungle right beside them. Sawyer almost jumped out of his skin. The last thing he wanted was to be struck by lightning. He still had Helo's gun in his hands, though now it was so wet he wasn't sure if it would even work. He shoved into the back of his pants and moved under the shelter of the kitchen area, shaking his hair to get the worst of the wet off of it. Penny was standing looking bedraggled. There was no point trying to say anything, the noise of the rain and thunder was too loud for any of them to be heard. He wondered what Apollo was going to do, would he fly off in this or risk waiting until the worst of it passed over? He'd have to go, Sawyer realized. After what Daniel Faraday said he couldn't risk waiting any longer. Looked like there was a chance that he'd crash again and they'd have the pleasure of Apollo's company for a long long time. There was another sound, something like a shout, coming from the jungle behind them. Sawyer stared through the increasing wall of rain to try and see. Another shot. Clearer this time. Not thunder. And a shout. He recognized the voice immediately: _John Locke_. He felt Bernard step up beside him as he peered into the gloom.

Suddenly Locke emerged out of the gray, his shape sharpening as he came running, a backpack jiggling on his back and a huge knife in his right hand. Locke was nearing the camp now, waving his arms in a shooing motion. 'Get into cover! Thirty of them. Guns!'

And that was it. No more decisions left. If there ever really had been. It all happened so fast. Five seconds, no more, to run for the plane. Apollo was there with a high powered rifle, standing by the ramp and squinting into the murky downpour. They all stood stock still as another shot ran out. Then Locke had caught up and was grabbing Penny by the arm and gesturing her toward the plane. Penny hesitated, looking back at the jungle with terror on her face. Then she started to move at the sound of another shot, this one ricocheting off one of the trees. And that was it, they were all running and yelling and Apollo had halted halfway up the ramp, taking quick stock of the situation. Sawyer hung back a little, trying to figure out if there was any way out of this. Locke had said there were thirty of them. _Goddammit_. Coming out of the jungle now were two others, difficult to make out through the curtain of rain, but after a second he recognized the blonde hair of the woman from the alien ship - the one who had stood and watched him while the huge metal monster had clanked by her side. This was the last place Sawyer expected to see her. He suddenly recognized the other guy stumbling just behind her, panting and out of breath; Desmond. The rain added to the wild look of his hair and beard and he still had that half-crazed expression. Sawyer took a breath and paused a moment until Desmond was right up alongside. He was too out of breath to speak, but there was a shout from the trees behind and another shot, and that said everything that Sawyer needed to hear. He spun round as Desmond staggered past him. Then he started to run.

By the time they had neared the plane, Penny and Faraday had already been shoved inside and Locke was busy rushing Rose and Bernard toward the ramp. Bernard had Rose by the arm and was encouraging her up the plane's ramp. Sawyer heard more shouts, clearer now. He glanced back and could just about see gray shapes rushing onto the beach from the trees.

Sawyer was still ten or fifteen yards from the plane when Desmond stumbled and fell, tripping head first and landing heavily on the sand. Sawyer swallowed a mouthful of rain water as he twisted around to grab him and haul him to his feet. He took a moment to squint into the downpour behind them. He still couldn't make out anything clearly, but then there were more gunshots; the sharper cracking sounds breaking through the almost deafening noise of the rain. He felt the whir as a bullet sped by his right shoulder and then the thud as it hit the side of the plane. That was too close. Any half-baked thoughts he'd had of scooting around behind the plane and using it as cover to slip into the jungle and avoid getting onto the plane fled his mind. Right now he was totally focused on surviving the next five seconds. He hauled on Desmond's arm and glanced back to the figures now pouring out of the trees. They were spreading out and instead of rushing towards them taking up positions to get a better shot. He didn't have time to stop and count, but from a quick glance Sawyer estimated there were at least twenty of them.

He felt the panic rising in him as he desperately tried to haul Desmond to his feet, pulling him up on the arm nearest to him, but the man was a dead weight and sagged back onto the sand. Then Locke was there and bending to grab Desmond's other arm. A sharp cry of pain and Sawyer could see blood seeping from a wound on Desmond's left shoulder. The rain was washing it away as fast as it was forming, but there was still no doubt about the blood spreading in a thin wet sheen on his shirt. Sawyer was bending to get a better hold when the Cylon woman pulled him away, quickly and silently putting an arm around Desmond's waist, and lifting him effortlessly into the air. She held him out, arms outstretched in an awkwardly impossible show of strength and then sprinted forward. In three bounds she had Desmond inside the plane. It took Sawyer a moment to register just what she had done. Another bullet thudded into the plane

Sawyer ran. He could feel Locke right beside him, running moving with quick, powerful strides. It was a long few seconds. Any moment Sawyer was expecting a bullet in the back. He powered forward, ignoring the ache in his legs and the burning in his lungs. As they made it up the ramp and inside, panting and out of breath, Locke took a deep gasping breath and grinned, giving him a manly slap on the shoulder. Like it had been some victory or something. Sawyer could hear the whine of more bullets and the thuds as they hit the side of the plane. He squeezed himself inside, right away from the hatch doorway that was closing too slowly for his liking. Penny, Daniel, Rose and Bernard were sitting as far away from the entrance as they could, all soaking wet and shivering. Apollo was up at the cockpit, the steady whine and slight vibration telling Sawyer that the plane was ready to go. Another couple of shots. Sawyer automatically flinched. The kept on closing as the plane started to rotate and lift up into the air, hiding the closing hatch doorway as it spun slowly around.

In spite of the rain and the gunfire, he still found himself wanting to jump back out of the plane, to resist it taking him up and away. He knew that this was it, that he was being dragged away from the sunlight, from his camp, his book, the beach. Away from the Earth itself. Away from sanity. He stared down at the jungle through the closing door. He'd had no choice; there was nothing he could have done that would have prevented this from happening. He spat out another curse as he stood poised at the door of the plane.

But it was too late. Back to crazy.

If they'd caught up with him they would have killed him. There was no doubt about that. Juliet had been right. He suddenly wondered uneasily where Rousseau and Alex were. And Karl. They hadn't been with the beach campers. They had gone off somewhere to have their own family reunion and were probably holed up somewhere safe. Rousseau knew what she was doing. He should have gone with them. Better hidden on the Island than here, in some alien plane scooting around through time playing crazy with metal monsters and human machines. He should have gotten out of the camp sooner, found Karl and Alex and laid low with them. At least what happened on the Island was familiar: hate, murder, lies. He knew how to deal with that. Time travel and space ships and things that messed with your head - _that_ was far worse. At least on the Island he had known what way was up.

00000

Penny sat huddled at the back of the plane. She was soaked through, freezing cold and shivering uncontrollably. She couldn't believe it could be so cold on a tropical island. She was crouched down next to Daniel, trying her best to make sense of what was happening. All she knew - all she could do - was stay close to Daniel. Whatever else happened he had to be her compass. Daniel was ashen, muttering to himself about how terrible this was, how they wouldn't be able to undo it, how they shouldn't be going, how none of them should be going. He was shivering as well, his thin shirt stuck to his body, his black hair plastered to his head in wet strings. The plane was flying now, full of wet, scared, cold people. Apollo. _Whose real name was Lee_. The pilot. The irony of it didn't escape her. Here she was, enacting the scene that Desmond had experienced. Maybe it was the same plane. She felt a terrible ache of loss and loneliness. She never found Desmond. Richard Alpert had been wrong. She clenched her teeth to try to stop them from chattering. And to try and stop the tears. There was absolutely no point in here being here. She hadn't saved anyone, she hadn't contributed anything to this whole stupid process. She should have stayed at home.

In front of her was a mass of human bodies, the fair haired guy from the beach - Sawyer? - two others, an older couple. Rose. And Bernard. The kind ones. Then two new ones, a bald looking man and a tall blonde woman dressed in a skimpy red dress and high heels. They were standing around another figure on the ground. She couldn't see who it was, could only make out a dark pair of trousers through the gaps in the bodies. She had no idea what had just happened. Someone had run out of the trees and then there had been shooting and she had just started running. And now they were taking her to the space ship. She was sure this hadn't been part of Eloise's plan.

'We need to stop the bleeding.' The bald guy was speaking now. 'It's not serious, the bullet missed anything vital. Here, put pressure there.'

'The bullet's still inside,' the woman in the red dress said matter of factly. 'We have to get him to Galactica, there will be medical personnel there who can help him,'

'Jump in five, four three two...'

'Hold on Desmond, you'll be fine.'

_Desmond?_

She tried to stand up as the plane flashed into a weird motion that left her stomach heaving and her head spinning in all directions. 'Desmond!' she heard herself cry out, trying her best to push her way to her feet through the void. She felt her stomach move with her, rising in a sickening wave. She felt it rise up, then fall, like it was coming loose from her body and wrapping itself around a black, tight mass of darkness. Then she was tumbling down, down, unable to control the speed or direction of her movement. She put her hand out, trying to hold on, to find him, to grasp him through the darkness. But she was lost and floating now, falling, fading. It was all fading, in one big nauseous mess of black. She was gone.


	101. Pressure

Chapter 101

Pressure

Galen stood in the hanger deck with a mounting sense of panic. It wasn't the way the refugees had all arrived and collapsed, passed out on the floor of the planes so that they had to be dragged onto gurneys and ferried into an overcrowded sick bay. It wasn't even the way the crew looked at him like he was acting weird, like brown-nosing up to the XO was a new behavior they never thought they'd see in him. No. It was the Cylons.

The arrival of Boomer was something easily explained. Racetrack hadn't seemed inclined to gossip about it - she was more concerned with making sure the refugees were OK. He had no doubt though that once in the Officers Mess she'd be gabbling away. Her capacity to embellish a story was legendary. No, it was the arrival of Sharon and Helo, and then the sudden appearance - startling appearance - of the Six, impeccably, immaculately turned out complete with high heels and a skimpy red dress. Sure, she was a little rough around the edges, her arms covered in blood and her dress wet and practically see-through... He shook his head. If Sam were here he would be laughing. Sam had designed the Sixes. Partly as a joke, he'd said, to try and counter Ellen's penchant for realistic looking people. Ugly people, Sam had said. Like Cavil and the Ones. Or Leobin, the strange philosophical freak with all the neurosis and religious angst that Ellen could have poured into him. She had considered Leobin to be sophisticated and deep. Another laugh for Sam.

No, Sam had created the Six as his perfect blonde bombshell - with an intelligence and capacity for rational thought that totally contradicted that image. And Galen had countered with the Eight. In between was the now destroyed Seven - Ellen's attempt to join in the game with her gorgeous poetic dreamer. Galen swallowed hard when he remembered how it _had _been a game. A fun, light-hearted joyful thing they were doing, creating the best that they could. Where was Sam now? Was he somewhere in the fleet, living on one of the civilian ships without any awareness of who he really was? Galen silently hoped he would show up soon - or maybe not. Not until whatever was going down in the next half hour had run its course. Until then all bets were off as to whether or not any of them were going to survive.

He watched as the Six regally stepped off the edge of the plane, looking around her with that haughty, high-chinned stare that took in everything and left every man's eyes locked onto her. It made even his stomach clench when he saw her. She really was beautiful. He took a deep breath and checked himself. He wasn't in charge here. Not now. And nor was Saul. Adama was back and had resumed command, and Galen's future was now as uncertain as hers. He wateched silently as Apollo strode down the ramp to speak briefly to Adama. Galen couldn't hear what they were saying, but the conversation ended in a curt nod from Adama and a flurry of movement from Apollo. Apollo gestured to a couple of marines and they trotted up to him, surrounded Daniel Faraday and marched him across the hanger deck.

Galen sighed, glancing over to try and find any sign of Saul. He hadn't been here when they'd landed and was probably in CIC busy running the ship. Or looking out for the Cylon fleet. Another flutter of anxiety came along with that thought. They were playing a dangerous game. Had the virus worked? If it had, what then? What would happen if Cavil's programming layer was removed? The Cylons were so young, barely children. How would they react?

He looked around anxiously. Now he saw the marines stepping into line behind the Six. She hadn't lost consciousness like all the others. Nor had Sawyer,noranother that he hadn't seen before - thickset, balding, bristling with knives that the marines were currently removing from him. He was standing, arms in the air to show he wasn't resisting, looking around the hanger deck in open curiosity. The Six was more wary, her eyes dancing around the scene like some trapped predator, her attention stopping briefly to appraise him before fixing on Adama. When her eyes had passed over him there had been no recognition. None at all. Galen watched anxiously as Apollo turned a corner out of sight. There went the best chance of reason prevailing. At least until Saul showed up, which Galen hoped to God would be soon.

Desmond, the girl Penny and the older couple had all been unconscious, taken away by medical personnel, and with Daniel Faraday gone that left just the four of them still awake; himself, Sawyer, the Six and the new bald guy. Galen swallowed hard. He could feel the sweat prickling in his armpits. Since he'd landed the last raptor he had been kept here, in the corner of the hanger deck, guards around him but not drawing attention to the fact that he was being held. Galen wasn't sure why that was. Probably because the Commander didn't want to panic the crew. Finding Cylons as key personel like a Deck Chief wasn't going to be good for moral. Adama hadn't spoken to him since he'd been taken off the Island, but had stood stiffly waiting for Apollo to return. Now that everyone was back on Galactica, Galen suspected that whatever Adama had planned he wasn't going to like it.

'Chief?' Adama's voice was curt with authority. Galen turned and his back and shoulders stiffened automatically, the military bearing instinctive now after so long. It surprised him. It didn't feel natural. He didn't seem like himself anymore - he was the complete opposite to the old slouchy, laid back, anti-military, anti-establishment academic, more interested in making things work than sucking up to authority figures. Cavil's sense of humor was sickeningly sharp. 'Come with me.' Adama was already walking, assuming he would follow. So... he wasn't a Cylon now? Adama trusted him enough to turn his back on him, walking ahead stiffly and proudly. No, he was probably proving some sort of macho courage or, more likely he'd already figured that if Galen was going to kill him he would have done it by now. And of course there was Starbuck right behind him.

'Commander, what's going on?' They all turned to see Gauis Baltar walking quickly toward Adama.

Adama slowed but he didn't stop walking, forcing Baltar to trot over to his side'A military issue. Nothing that need concern you, Mr Vice President,'

'With the President incapacitated-'

'She's asleep, Mr Baltar. I wouldn't say that made her incapacitated.' Adama's tone was weary. Suddenly Galen could see the exhaustion etched on his features.

Gaius Baltar puffed himself up to his full height to square off against Adama. 'Nevertheless, as the Vice President I demand to-' Baltar stopped suddenly as he caught sight of the Six. She was watching him with wide eyes. _Recognition_. Baltar's voice trailed off as his eyes took in her form hungrily and they all watched as he swallowed hard, then with some effort dragged his gaze away from her. He cleared his throat, visibly scanning his memory for the end of his last sentence.

'Come with us.' Adama said gruffly and started walking again. He glanced sideways at Galen as he moved past him and took up the lead again, stepping firmly out to the corridor leading from the hanger deck. He probably had a pounding headache, Galen reflected. He remembered what it had been like when he came back to consciousness after first landing on the Island. Though he and Apollo had also been bound and beaten, which might have gone some way to contributing to their sore heads. Even so. And it only happened the first jump through the EM wave. He glanced over to Sawyer, the Six and the new guy, now being herded forward by marines. The fact that all three of them weren't unconscious meant, of course, that they had done this before, had jumped out from the Island on the EM wave. He didn't like the added puzzle of who the extra people were and what the hell was going on with them. It added a whole new level of complexity to the situation that made him even more wary.

He needed to talk to Saul. Needed to somehow get the virus spread around the fleet and, most of all, needed to have the whole of Galactica and the fleet on alert for any problems that might be thrown up once the virus became activate.. He would have preferred to introduce it to a few of the Cylons in a controlled way first. Like this Six here. If only the Commander had stayed on that planet just a little while longer, he might have had the time. But of course time was something he didn't have . He could see now that all pretence had gone and the hanger deck was bristling with marines on full alert, all focused on him, the Six and the other two like they were about to single-handedly leap up and take the ship by force. He had no idea what the commander had planned - so far the overt armed response had been relatively subdued. But Adama had that look, that uncompromising anger that Galen knew from experience meant trouble. He felt his heart start to race.

They walked out of the hanger deck and into the maze of Galactica's corridors, led by Adama and followed by at least eight heavily armed marines right behind them, and corridors full of more sentries lining the route. The Six was looking around uncomfortably. She thought she was the only Cylon in this little group, he realized. She had no idea who he was. He almost laughed. Almost. And not because it was funny, but because it was such a mess. Christ, if he'd thought for just a moment that he would be waking up into this nightmare, where the Cylons he had helped create had turned and committed genocide-

They turned a corner only to be met by another phalanx of soldiers. Galen felt himself growing more nervous. He looked around to see Sawyer frowning. The Six had a tense, pensive look that told him she was preparing to defend herself. He'd seen that look many times during Sam's endless trials. Sam had wanted to combine sophistication with a childlike innocence about the world. Galen had always had his doubts about the wisdom of that particular mix. Still, it made a change from the earnest stupidity of Tori's Fives - funny little men modeled after one of her mentors at university. The Fives were supposed to be scientific geniuses but had so far shown very little spark of intelligence. Maybe Tori's idea of intelligence was so far removed from anything he recognized as to be barely identifiable...

He irritatingly pushed the thoughts of Tori aside. Memories, observations and impressions kept coming into his mind and distracting him from what was going on in the here and now. This really wasn't the time to get caught up in wondering whether Tori's creations were a success or not, but the moment he stopped actively focussing on a task he could feel his mind starting to drift. He guessed it was his mind's way of integrating all of his past experiences and connecting the two sets of memories, but he just hoped it wouldn't upset his focus enough to get them all killed.

They turned another corner.

'Where are we going?' asked the bald man.

No one answered him.

'There seems to be a lot of firepower here,' he continued, almost conversationally. Adama didn't even turn around. The marines had removed everyone's weapons back there on the hanger deck, quickly and efficiently taking away the knives, rifles and handguns and then stepping back neutrally, refusing to make eye contact. Standard stuff. It would have seemed almost normal if Adama didn't have that look and Starbuck hadn't been armed to the teeth with a sharpshooter and a swagger that told him she was prepared to use it. Along with the other twelve marines. Or more like twenty now. So a few more had joined them then. Or he'd missed a few on his last count. His mouth was dry. This wasn't looking good.

Another group of marines joined them on the next intersection, looming over Adama as he strode purposefully on.

'Commander?' Baltar's voice rose in pitch from where he was trotting just behind Adama. They were approaching one of the port airlocks. The question of course was whether they would walk past or... they halted and took up position, Adama finally turning to face them, the marines grimly flanking him. Galen swallowed, trying to figure out what he was going to say. He knew there had to be a resurrection ship nearby, what with so many Cylons in the fleet. It wasn't dying he was afraid of. He'd done that so often, round and round. Life, death, resurrection. It was what he would wake up to that bothered him. More of the Cavil models? Probably. Or maybe he wouldn't wake up at all. Maybe Cavil had destroyed the tanks for his body. Ah. Suddenly he didn't feel so easy after all. Besides, he had work to do here, crucial work. Work that couldn't wait. Besides, only he and the Six were Cylons. The other two had no hope of surviving.

'Commander?' Baltar's voice had risen in pitch and he pushed his way roughly past the marines to stand in front of Adama. 'What's going on?'

'What does it look like Mister Baltar?'

'Well, I-' Baltar stumbled for words. Galen could see him thinking frantically. Galen stepped forward, 'Sir?' and was immediately halted by one of the marines. Four other rifles bristled around him, aiming squarely for his head, ready to shoot to kill.

'Sir.' He tried to keep his voice steady. 'These people aren't Cylons.'

Adama turned to him slowly, moving with a forced control that barely hid the rage behind his bearing. Galen prayed that Saul was on the ball, that he would find out what was going on and get his hairy ass down there. In the meantime he had to stall, had to play for time. 'And I suppose you would know about that,' Adama said icily.

Galen ran his tongue around a dry mouth. 'I can explain about that, Sir. It isn't what you think. But these people are just as human as you are.' He waved at the group behind him. They were watching him silently, uneasily.

'Human?' One of them, the new bald one, stepped forward, taking in the bristling guns surrounding him with a narrowing of his eyes. 'Is that what this is about?'

'As opposed to a machine,' Sawyer muttered, his eyes on all the marines surrounding them. He looked scared. Beyond scared.

'Look,' Galen took a small step forward again, checking his movement as he heard the click of numerous safeties coming off. 'It's just me and the Six here,' he gestured to the tall blonde Cylon, her eyes widening in surprise.. 'But if you airlock us, I have no idea what will happen. I'm an... enemy of the Cylons. And your best hope.' It was a gamble. A huge gamble. He just hoped Adama had enough trust or curiosity or whatever it would take to convince him that he was sincere.

Adama's expression hardened. 'Put them in the airlock.'

'No! Wait! You can't do this! You have no authority! As the Vice President, I insist that you go through proper procedures. These people are civilians, they are under my jurisdiction-'

'He's right. You don't want to do this, Bill,' Galen almost fainted with relief as Saul's voice echoed through the corridor.

Adama turned, his jaw set with determination. He straightened, waiting to hear what the XO was about to say. Galen held his breath.

'There are five Basestars circling our position,' Saul continued, 'And if we start airlocking their people they might start shooting.'

00000

Sawyer stood in the huddle of wet, wretched prisoners and gritted his teeth with impotent despair. He'd been caught before, had guns pointed at him before, felt that sense of powerlessness at being at the mercy of someone else's decisions. But not like this. Not this feeling that something really bad was about to go down. He hadn't known where they were being taken, hadn't understood the significance of the sealed door. Until he'd looked up and seen the sign. _Airlock_. Helo's big no-go area on the mining crate. He remembered how he and Juliet had assumed that they had been underwater - once they'd decided that Helo wasn't bluffing and there _was _some unseen danger behind that door. Now he knew. They were in space- and yeah, airlock bad. Very bad. Airlock instant death. He swallowed uncomfortably. They had been given a last minute reprieve. Or a last second reprieve. Much too close. Instead of being thrown out into space they'd been put in this cell without any explanation or idea of whether the airlock was off the cards now or merely postponed until later. He shuddered. He should have stayed on the Island, run into the jungle, looked for Alex and Rousseau. Anything but this. There was nowhere to run here, nowhere to hide. Not good.

He wondered where Juliet was and why she wasn't here with him. Why weren't any of the others here? Had they already been killed, thrown out of that airlock and into space? He felt a tide of exhausted sickness. Was Juliet dead? He looked around. Only the Chief, Locke, himself, and the red dress Cylon. Just four. Penny had been swept away somewhere when she'd collapsed, along with Desmond, almost unconscious from the pain of the wound in his shoulder. Hurt like a bitch, he knew that - feeling the sympathetic throb in his own shoulder where he'd been shot in almost exactly the same place. That seemed a lifetime ago now; his first little adventure on the Island. His first attempt to escape. He sighed and slumped down against the back wall of the Chief was standing pensively, chewing his lip as he stood by the door of the big cage. The blonde woman was sitting silently to one side, staring morosely over at the marine standing by the far wall. Guess she hated being locked up as much as he did.

'So this is really a spaceship?' Locke's voice had a note of awe in it. Sawyer turned to stare at him. He looked like he was having some sort of religious experience. Sawyer just felt sick. He thought again of Juliet and his guts spasmed in response. Had they already enacted the sick little ceremony in front of the airlock with Juliet and the other survivors? He cursed himself now for waiting, for not going with her. If he had, at least he would have known what had happened to her. What if the jump had taken her back to the weird bath place? Or the mining crate? Or somewhere else in time and space? Juliet could be anywhere. He wanted to get up and shout, to bang on the bars in frustration. But something told him that the hard looking marines with the guns were ordered to shoot first and think later, so with an effort he clenched his hands into fists and forced himself to wait. There was nothing he could do. Nothing.


	102. Fight, Flight or Freeze

Chapter 102

Fight, Flight or Freeze

Adama stared at the Dradus screen. Four Basestars now. Sitting there. No signal, no movement. No sign of attack so far. It was like they were waiting- but for what? Saul was next to him, licking his lips nervously. He was edgy as all hell, and Adama could smell the liquor on his breath. He'd been drinking again. That wasn't good. When Adama had gone planetside Saul had been left in charge of the ship and the fleet - and of course his biggest crutch was the bottle. Still, the ship was still here and the fleet still intact. Saul had held it all together. Adama had faith in his old friend. Dig deep enough and he knew the mettle inside of him.

'They're just waiting,' Adama mused out loud. 'They've finally caught us, so why not just finish us off?'

He was sure he saw Saul flinch beside him. 'I think we need to get the Chief up here.'

His words were so... out of place, that Adama turned, startled. 'What?'

'The Chief,' Saul repeated slowly, reluctantly. 'I think we need him.' Then he hesitated before he added. 'He sent a virus to the Cylon fleet - in the Cylon Raider. He modified it and sent it out. Maybe...' he paused and then clamped his jaw shut on the next words.

Adama turned and stared at him. 'You authorized this?'

Saul shifted uncomfortably. 'You were down on Kobol. It seemed like a good idea to at least try to-'

Adama lowered his voice to a hiss. 'And you didn't stop to think it was a trap? You didn't think that maybe he was sending them our coordinates?' By the look on his XO's face, Adama could see that thought hadn't even crossed his mind. Saul must have taken the Chief out of the brig - in spite of the fact that he was there because they thought he was a Cylon - listened to some fancy story about saving the fleet and then let the Chief send the Cylons their coordinates. He stared at Saul in mute horror. When he'd told Saul to interrogate the Chief, he hadn't for one minute thought he would be gullibly tricked into giving away their position. Maybe it was the liquor impairing his judement. Or maybe Saul hadn't believed Starbuck's accusation that the Chief was a Cylon and had decided to ignore them. The Chief had come back to get them, had said he was a Cylon enemy, but had also admitted that he was one of them. However well-meaning Saul's actions might had been, however much he had thought he was pulling it out of the bag, he had doomed the fleet. Adama sighed. It was too late to figure it all out now. The questions could come later, if there even was a later. That was looking unlikely now. However, they had gotten to this point and there was no point in brooding over it. It was done. It was over.

Adama sighed and turned back to the Dradus screen. Four - no, five little blips, tauntingly close. Each one a Cylon Basestar. There was no escape now. No way to outrun them, and fighting was futile. It was over.

Adama turned as Apollo hurried into the CIC, called back from interrogating Daniel Faraday. He watched stoically as Apollo came up beside him, one glance at the Dradus screen telling him all he needed to know.

'So they caught up with us.' Apollo said softly.

Adama grunted and didn't say anything. He wasn't going to let this whole situation fall apart. They would keep their discipline and if they had to die here, then they would do so with dignity.

'I think we figured out where Earth is,' Apollo said quietly, his eyes now locked on the Dradus screen. 'Though looks like it's too late for that now.'

'If you can believe anything that man says,' Adama said stiffly.

Apollo shrugged. 'Gaeta has checked the map with me. It adds up. I think there's a good chance that Faraday was telling the truth-' Apollo stopped talking and sighed. He could see that his father wasn't in the mood for this. Earth could be a million light years away or just next door for all the difference it would make now. They were dead. Anyone could see that. Apollo descended into a brooding silence, perfectly matching the mood of the rest of the CIC. Adama was relieved. He didn't want to hear it, didn't want to hear about Earth or hope. This was what they had now, the green blips on the Dradus screen and how they would meet their final end.

Adama didn't react as Gaeta silently returned, slipping into his place and shuffling his replacement back a tier. There was a short rustle of movement and then silence. Adama stood, legs planted firmly on the deck of the CIC, letting the silence stretch on. All eyes were on him, that expectant hush before a battle when everyone was wound up tight and ready for action. For orders. His orders.

Only this time he didn't have any.

He stared at the screen, his mind going round their situation. They were pinned down and helpless. They had no moves left - even trying to take as many Cylons as they could with them would be a futile gesture. The Cylons would respawn, resurrect or whatever they called it.

It was over.

He waited. Did the rest of the fleet know what was happening? Gaeta and Dee would be monitoring the com traffic; the chatter from the fleet, the panic, the questions from the captains. Dee would be blocking them all, giving him the space for his moment of reflective silence, his time to make the battle decisions that would save them all. The whole of the CIC was intently watching him, but was the Cylons' turn now. He had no moves left.

A hush fell over the room, the only sound the blip of the Dradus marking the continued presence of the Basestars. Saul was silent next to him. Adama could sense Apollo and Starbuck behind him giving him some reassurance of support. He knew that they would be perfectly aware of the hopelessness of the situation. For some reason that gave him a scrap of comfort. Enough to keep him standing upright, giving him enough background not to crumple as he stared their final defeat in the face.

'What are they waiting for?' Starbuck's voice was loud in the silence.

Of course the answer was obvious; the Cylons were savoring their victory. They had chased the fleet halfway across the galaxy for so long, why rush the ending?

'Sir, I'm getting a signal from one of the Cylon Basestars,' Dee said quietly.

'Let's hear it,' he growled.

The voice came through, thin and tinny on the CIC speaker system. Male. Adama recognized it immediately. Leobin. 'Hi. As you can see we got you surrounded,' There was a chuckle, 'But we'll behave if you will. We want to speak to Uncle Galen. You still there Uncle?'

There was a moment of silence before the voice continued. 'We recognized your signature on that little gift you sent us.' There was a long pause. Adama planted his feet more solidly as the voice continued. 'Not there? OK, so shat about you, Uncle Saul - surely you're right there in the CIC cosying up to the humans?'

Adama felt his mouth set in a hard line. He turned to Saul, expecting him to be as irritated as he was with Leobin's mental games. But Saul looked ashen. Scared. And something else was there, something he couldn't immediately recognize. Saul met his old friend's gaze for a second and then his eyes slid quickly away. Shame. Yeah. That was it. Of course. By authorizing Chief Tyrol to send that virus he'd given away their position and brought this on them all. Of course he felt guilty. It had been a dumb fool move and now they were all having to pay.

There was another crackling sound and then Leobin's voice filled the CIC again. 'How about we send a bunch of us over and then we can all talk.'

Adama stiffened. 'No.'

'Oh, Commander. You're there.' A note of irritation crept into the tinny voice. 'Where's Galen and Saul? I hope you haven't hurt them because we would be very unhappy if that was the case.'

Adama turned again to Saul, standing stiffly beside him, tall and brittle. He didn't say anything.

'Well, we're sending a ship over anyway. I suggest you cooperate.' Then a click. Silence.

'So what now?' Asked Apollo.

'We meet them.' Adama said.

'Meet them?' Starbuck looked at him like he had lost his mind.

'I don't think blowing them out of the sky would be a good move,' he responded dryly.

'It's a trap,' Starbuck said icily.

'No. It's a game.' Adama turned wearily. 'And we have no choice but to play it.'

They were silent as they made their way down to the hanger deck. Adama didn't even bother with a marine escort, though he'd ordered several squads to be there waiting for them at the hanger deck. If there were any hidden Cylon assassins or agents wandering around the corridors on Galactica then fine, bring it on. And if not, then he'd play out this little charade and take whatever ending the Cylons inflicted on them. All he could do now was keep his face set and his feet moving, determined to hold up, to show what real people were like in the face of inhuman, monstrous machines. He suddenly missed Laura with an ache that rushed too much feeling into his lungs. She was still unconscious in sick bay. He could really have done with some of her steel right now.

By the time they reached the hanger deck the Cylon plane was already landing. Adam stood stiffly with Saul, Starbuck and Apollo. Waiting. None of them spoke. They stood silently as the Cylon ship was winched in, the deck hands working nervously, clearly not sure what was going on, but aware that whatever it was it was important. None of the usual banter or shouting, just quick, efficient silence. Adama watched as the hatch door of the Heavy Raider slid open and the Cylons emerged, blinking a little in the bright lights of the hanger bay.

There were three of them in the Cylon delegation. Leobin, scruffy in a shirt hanging out of the side of his pants, a smart looking ginger-haired woman with a fierce expression, and a third that looked... exactly like Boomer. That was unnerving. Now there were three Boomers on his ship. He had already decided to airlock Boomer and the other one, the one with Helo. He would have done it already, but they gotten themselves to sick bay under guard by the time he'd been airlifted off that beach so he'd taken the ones on the last Raptor instead. Besides, there had been something about the way Doc Cottle had looked at him that told him that the Doc considered them his patients - enough to make him strenuously object if Adama tried to airlock them under his nose. And then word would get around. The last thing he needed now was a ship-wide panic about Cylon insurgents. Not that it mattered anymore - and enough of the deck crew had seen Boomer and her look-alike arrive to make the connection themselves. Maybe he should have gone to sickbay and got rid of them first. Suddenly he wished he'd done it already, before the basestars had arrived. Maybe that would have made them finish this quickly. Instead he was standing here waiting for a Cylon delegation to do whatever it was that they wanted to do, giving them the chance to toy with their prey just a little more.

He took a long slow breath as they descended the ramp from the Cylon plane. He wondered who else of his people were Cylons. It was immaterial now. He steeled himself, recognizing at once the face he had smashed to a pulp all that time ago. Leobin. The one they had interrogated and then thrown out of the airlock. Leobin must have been thinking similar thoughts because his smile had a sly edge to it.

'We meet again, Commander,' he said with an arrogant tilt of his head that acknowledged his previous defeat and his present victory. Adama felt himself bristling immediately. Leobin's smile rested on him for a while and then his attention drifted over his left shoulder. 'Maker Saul.' The smile faltered now, uncertainty behind his eyes. Adama kept a close watch on Leobin. He was sick of the head-frak games, sick of all of this. He let the hatred he was feeling shine through. They may have them surrounded, there may be no hope left but he'd be damned if he would let them win.

'Say your piece and then get the frak off my ship,' he said coldly and calmly. Leobin swung his attention back to Adama and his smile faded completely.

'All in good time, Commander, though I would like to point out to you that you are in no position to dictate terms.' Leobin turned back to Saul. 'So who else is here? Where's Maker Ellen?' He turned around as if Saul's wife was going to appear from somewhere behind them. 'No sign of her Highness?' Leobin's smile was back, mocking.

Adama looked at Saul to see he was frowning. 'She's here,' Saul answered quickly, then added, 'the tanks?'

'Are working. Don't worry, yours are fine. I checked them myself.'

It took a second or two for Adama to register exactly what was going on, for him to realize that Saul was a part of this conversation, not the butt of it. A cold hard knot settled in his gut as he swung around slowly to face his XO. Saul's face was pinched and set hard. But not with hatred or disdain. 'Sam?' He heard Saul say in a voice he hardly recognized.

'On Caprica,' Leobing was saying, 'We've sent out a ship to pick him up. No idea about Tori.' Leobin turned to Adama. 'So. You've figured it out. Yes, you have a few cookoos in your nest, Commander.'

Adama ignored him and faced his XO. 'What's going on?'

Saul met his eyes and winced. There was a long pause. For a while neither man said anything. Saul swallowed nervously then rubbed his palms wearily over his face. Adama was aware of Starbuck behind him, unnaturally silent for once. And Lee? Was he making any sense of this? Adama's gaze flickered over to where his son was standing, silently watching. No, he looked as confused as all of them. Leobin and the two other Cylons were waiting expectantly, watching the exchange with interest.

Adama turned slowly back to Saul. 'So you're a Cylon,' he said quietly. He didn't believe it, didn't feel any truth or certainty in the words, just threw them out because he didn't know what else to say.

'Yeah.'

And that wasn't what he'd expected. He'd known Saul Tigh for years. Years. This didn't make sense. It didn't add up. Unless they'd switched out the real Saul Tigh and replaced him with a Cylon. Where was he now? Dead probably. Who else had been snatched, copied and replaced by Cylons? Lee? Starbuck?

He cleared his throat, realizing that the Cylons and Saul still hadn't said anything, but were waiting for him to respond. 'What did you do with the real Saul Tigh?' The bitterness was bile in his mouth as he formed the words.

Saul tried to meet his eyes but his gaze slid away. 'There never was one. It was always me. Look, we need to talk. We need to get Galen up here and figure all of this out.'

Adama didn't say anything, but stood mute, barely comprehending what was happening. He felt like his knees were about to buckle.

'Dad.' It was Apollo's voice, a hand on his arm. 'He's right. We need to go somewhere we can talk.' Apollo's voice was stronger, loud enough for anyone around to hear. Then he was moving forward, the hand still guiding him and lending him some strength.

Something stirred in him then, the threat of a rage so huge that it would drown all of them. Saul had been his friend. The depth of the betrayal was big enough to destroy everything. Adama could see he had no choice, could see his options narrowed to nothing. But whatever they wanted, whatever they were going to do, he was still the commander of this fleet. With an effort, Adama straightened and then nodded over to a couple of the marines. 'Get the Chief,' he ordered curtly. Then he turned and strode towards his quarter, not caring if Saul followed or not, or whether or not he put a bullet in his back. Now or later, the timing was immaterial. As far as he was concerned, it had already happened


	103. Home Base

Chapter 103

Home Base

Juliet stood quietly by the wall and sipped from the cup of water the nurse had just given her. It tasted stale, metallic, like it had been sitting in pipes for too long. The same taste as that water on the mining crate. She hadn't liked it then and she didn't like it now. She was tired of this already - the constant lights, the noise, the movement of so many people. Tired of so many bodies in so small a space. Tired of being here. In spite of the water, this wasn't like it had been on that tiny space ship with Helo and Sharon. At least there she had been able to escape once in a while, at least there she had felt safe. Here it was all one big lie. And on top of that, this was like being an intern in a busy hospital, and that had been the reason she had gone into research. She didn't have the personality for it, for _this._

And she missed Sawyer. Not that she regretted her decision. There was no doubt in her mind about leaving the Island. No way was she going to watch someone else die. No way could she let it be like Goodwin all over again. No.

Of course James had been right. There was no future here - things would probably turn out worse. Her only comfort was Helo's solid presence waiting and watching by Sharon's bed. There had been a tacit agreement between the two of them that they would keep both Sharon and Boomer safe. Juliet didn't fully understand the politics of this place - only that there were people called Cylons that were the enemy and that Helo was very afraid of what was going to happen to Sharon and the baby. Not that Juliet could do much if the burly marines that stood by Sharon's bed decided to start causing trouble. But she would try.

She sighed and cradled the cup of warm, stale water in her hands. What time was it anyway? She glanced over at the clock. At least that looked the same - weirdly. There was so much the same, so much that made it feel like a seamless transition to this space-age future. She didn't even know what date it was, hadn't even thought to ask. There hadn't been any point on the mining crate and she'd been too busy on the Island. And now she wouldn't ask because she didn't want to draw attention to herself, but still she wanted to know: how far into the future had she come?

The clock said it was only midday, but on the Island it must be going on evening now. James would be getting ready to sleep. Was he alone there? The last plane had come in about an hour ago with Desmond on board, but there had been no sign of Locke or anyone else. Maybe Locke had decided to stay on the Island - or maybe Desmond and Locke had gotten separated and Locke was someplace else, still being flung around in space and time. Maybe Desmond had turned up out of thin air when Apollo's plane activated the jump drive and... and there were too many unknowns. It didn't really matter. James wasn't here and that was all that mattered. She had half hoped that he would have changed his mind. But no, he wasn't here.

Something inside of her had frozen a little as she had watched Doc Cottle spend the best part of that hour fixing up the bullet wound in Desmond's shoulder. Not serious, he'd pronounced, but it would hurt like hell once he woke up. She wondered where had gotten the wound. On the Island? In which case James was probably dead. Or worse. The only ones she could ask were Apollo - who she hadn't seen - and Desmond. After the surgery they had taken Desmond to private room and posted two marines outside the door. She had been told that Desmond was still technically a prisoner so no one could go in there without authorization. She hadn't dare ask any more.

She sighed, putting the cup down carefully by the sink. She felt squeezed into this tiny box of safety in her role as a doctor. She sensed how fragile it was though, that any wrong move could unravel everything. She didn't understand what was going on, but could see, feel, _sense _the politics that balanced her life and the lives of those around her on a knife blade, could feel how edgy everyone was, from the marines to the nurses. He instinct was to close up, clam up and find somewhere to hide. She took a deep steadying breath. No, she was a doctor and she should focus on that role, care for her patients and hold it together.

Charlie was doing fine. And Boomer's fever looked like it was finally under control. Sharon was sleeping now and... and everyone else was completely unconscious except for Helo. She was surrounded by unconscious bodies and she was totally and utterly alone. She could have done Jack here. All the people from the beach camp were laid out on beds and gurneys around her. The nurses had checked them all, said all their vitals were fine and now patrolled the silent sleeping figures, taking a pulse and blood pressure every so often, moving quietly and efficiently. They wouldn't be doing that if they going to kill everyone or put them prison, would they? Surely she was letting her imagination scare her. The quiet was eerie - no sound except for the low level white noise of everyone breathing. It made it more surreal. That and the lack of sleep. She was losing it from sheer exhaustion, long since beyond the stage where she could think straight. Maybe she should slip onto a spare bed and have a sleep herself. She wasn't good to anyone like this, she'd barely slept between trying to keep Charlie alive and helping Sharon with the baby and getting them all safely off the Island. She shuddered as she remembered the terrifying moments when Jack had pronounced that Charlie wasn't going to make it, that he had to give him more blood NOW and Juliet had been the one following instructions, terrified that Jack would pass out and then she would screw up and have to watch Charlie die and it would all be her fault...

It was too much. She was too tired. And now she was on a spaceship a long, long way from home. She would never see her sister again, never meet her sister's child, never go back. She felt the tears pricking the backs of her eyes and blinked them away quickly. She couldn't afford to break down. Not yet. Not now. Maybe not ever. She looked around the room, at Jack and Kate and the others, at Clare and her little baby. That made her smile a little. At least the baby seemed OK. She had been worried about what affect the jump would have on the tiny child, but he seemed fine. They all seemed fine.

'Hey.'

The touch on her shoulder made her jump and she spun quickly with a gasp of terror only to see Helo standing beside her, an apologetic half smile on his face.

'Sorry. I didn't mean to freak you out.'

She shook her head. 'I'm just a little jumpy, that's all.'

He nodded, chewing his bottom lip as he surveyed the room. 'What do you think it is that knocks them all out?'

She hesitated, not sure how he would take it, but she had to try. He was one person she could trust now. 'I think it's the time travel,' she said quietly, watching him closely to see his reaction. He looked startled for a moment and focused more intently on her. She met his gaze, 'it's the only thing that makes sense.' That was a lie because the truth was that nothing made sense. She felt like saying that to him, but instead found herself blurting out the one thing that would confirm or deny it. 'We're from Earth,' she said, feeling a rush of adrenaline as she said the words. 'And I think you're from our future. We don't even have space travel yet,' she added with a half laugh.

He kept looking at her for a moment, his expression gone completely blank and then she watched as his eyes slid around the room, taking in the bodies around him, the silence and the deep, rhythmic breathing. 'You're from a planet that you call Earth,' he said slowly, 'but who is to say where that is? And time travel?' he shook his head.

'I saw myself.' She blurted out, wondering why the hell she was saying so much and realising that she was just so goddamned tired now, so exhausted by trying to figure it all out. And there was no James anymore. No James to lend her support and sanity. She was going crazy inside her own head. 'When we arrived on the Island,' she said, 'I _watched _myself and James hit the FTL button on Boomer's Raptor and then disappear. For that moment there were two of me.' The moment she said it she regretted it. It sounded more than implausible; he wasn't going to believe her. But then so what if he thought she was crazy? There was a whole hospital wing of crazy right there front of him and in a little while she would blend right in. Soon everyone would be waking up and acting seven levels of crazy once they figured out they were on a space ship. A shiver ran through her. A small part of her was looking forward to that - not the disorientation or the mental suffering they would be going through, but the company. She wanted Jack to be in on it. Sayid even. Anyone.

Helo was gazing out over the ward, looking into the middle distance. 'Space and time,' he mused quietly. 'That's what Desmond said on the mining crate.'

'When he appeared out of thin air.' She clarified.

Helo sucked in a breath. 'So what now?'

She almost laughed. Typical Helo. Ever practical. 'I don't know.' She hesitated. 'Do they think we're Cylons?' she asked, jumping at the thought and saying it in one beat.

Another sharp breath and he frowned. 'Yeah. I think so.'

'That's not good.'

'No.'

She looked around at the marines lining the walls, their faces impassive. Hard under their helmets.

'The Old Man got Apollo back with that last Raptor,' he said softly, 'I guess now he'll decide what to do with all of us.' Helo looked over to where Sharon was still sleeping. 'She says if she dies then she'll get resurrected on a Cylon ship.' he said softly. 'But the baby will die.'

'You said they think Cylons are machines,' she said. 'That big metal robot we saw-'

'A Centurion, yeah. That was a machine. But the human models?' he shrugged. 'I don't think so.'

She frowned, 'So your people really think that Sharon is a machine?'

'That's right.'

'And you believe that?'

He shook his head. 'No. Seems to me they're as human as you or me. Sharon said she didn't know who made them or why, but they were so human that no one could tell them apart. And I'd believe her only there are hundreds, maybe thousands of clones just like her, and that's - well, that's not right is it?' He chewed his lip like he did when he was thinking.

'Boomer,' Juliet said softly.

'Yeah.'

Juliet couldn't help but look over to where Boomer lay asleep. 'But cloning humans isn't the same as making a machine,' she persisted, 'Identical twins are a sort of clone-' she left that thought drift off to Helo's assertion that there could be thousands of Sharons. He was right, that was something else entirely. She couldn't help but suppress a shiver.

'It doesn't really matter, not after what has happened,' Helo said. 'With the war. The Cylons came out of nowhere and nuked all twelve planets. Now all that is left of the human race are a few thousand of us in a fleet running for our lives.'

She felt something stab cold and hard in her guts. She tried to grasp what Helo had just said. Had she known all this before? Had Helo mentioned it? Had he talked about it all those months on the mining crate? She felt herself blanching. 'Why didn't you spell it out to us so we could understand?'

'You two were weird.' he said with a small laugh. 'I guessed pretty early on that you weren't from the colonies. And Sharon felt bad enough about it already. She didn't need it shoved down her throat. She hadn't been responsible for it. It wouldn't have changed anything but made her mad.'

Juliet frowned, thinking back to how it had been those first few days; the mistrust, the suspicion. It had taken a good while to talk to Helo and he was right, they hadn't been exactly open to his strange space talk. Still, she couldn't believe now how dumb they had both been, how totally unwilling to see what was right here in front of them. 'And your Commander thinks we are clones as well?'

'That's right.'

Oh great. She refilled the cup, took another sip of the water and found that her hand was shaking.

'What's going to happen to us? I mean, who is going to believe that we aren't Cylons?'

Helo's tight lipped expression told her more than she wanted to know.

0000

'Who are you?'

Galen looked over from his contemplation of the bars in front of him to see the Six frowning, her brow furrowed in delicate concentration. He met her gaze. Not even a flicker of recognition. Just like Simon, the number Four. He wondered where Saul had put him. There was no sign of him here in the brig. Knowing Saul, he had hidden him in his own quarters. He should have dealt with it himself. Saul always had been a complete pushover; a vague, kindly, bumbling academic. Putting him in the military - as an officer? Another of Cavil's sick jokes.

Galen ignored the Six, looking back through the bars as if she hadn't spoken. There was nothing he could say to her. Nothing he _should _say to her. Cavil was round here somewhere - maybe even in the next room, probably in the isolation cells only a few feet from this door and his hearing was probably good enough to be listening to anything they had to say. Plus, from what Saul had said, there was now a whole fleet of Cylon Base stars surrounding Galactica and the tiny flotilla of civilian ships she protected. What the hell was going on? Had his virus worked? Or had it acted like a beacon and brought the whole Cylon fleet down on them all?

There was a sound of rattling, boots on the floor and then a squad of six marines pushed through the hatch door, spoke a few murmured words to the guards and then ranged around the edge of the room, waiting.

Galen watched nervously as the cell door opened and the squad leader gestured for him to leave the cell. He moved stiffly, looking briefly at the scared faces surrounding him. Sawyer looked as if he was going to be sick and the other guy - well, he looked more curious. The six looked like she was ready to take them all on. 'Don't,' he said to her, catching her eyes again. She looked surprised, a moment's hesitation as she tried to figure out what he had said. Enough. Enough to get them all out of the door without her going ninja on them. He knew what she was capable of. Sam's secret bombshell. He stepped past her and out of the cell door, feeling his heart in his throat was it was closed behind him.

'Where are you taking me?' he asked, knowing by the marines' expressions that he wasn't going to get an answer. They fell in around him and started marching him out of the room. He still had his uniform on. He was still one of them, he thought. At least to look at. The easy way that his body automatically moved in time to theirs made sense of that lie. It made it worse somehow.

So he was scared. He admitted it. He was crapping-his-pants scared. He'd been in battles before, had been under fire and in danger of being killed, but somehow that paled into insignificance in the face of the blind panic he was trying not to feel right now. When he'd thought he was a regular colony-style human who'd die and then be gone he hadn't feared his own death the way he did now. Maybe it was decades - well, centuries, really - of fighting that final, undoable kind of death, the thought that he would always wake up in a comfortable tank of fluid in a new, perfect body. He had forgotten how deep that fear ran when the resurrection technology made ultimate death such a distant possibility. And now, being marched up the corridors of Galactica by a group of hard-faced marines, he had to admit to being more scared than he had been since it had all started, since their own planet had gone up in flames and they had escaped in their own desperate bid to flee across the galaxy. Hell, he had no idea what he would meet if he _did _die. He was almost certain that Cavil would have destroyed the tanks. It was what he would have done in Cavil's place, and while Galen had no illusions that he understood anything about the workings inside Cavil's brain - he was so firmly Ellen's creature and who knew what went on inside her - he knew that Cavil was deranged and vicious enough to kill all of them for good and forever.

It was what they used to say to children. _For good and forever._ What happens when you die for good and forever? No one knows.

He gritted his teeth as they turned a corner towards what he knew was the nearest airlock. There was no sign of the Commander, Apollo or Starbuck. Would the Commander get some marines to airlock him? Galen had to admit that yes, he would. Where the hell was Saul? He swallowed the nervous bile that was lodged in the back of his throat and threatening to choke him before he even reached the airlock hatch door. And then they were there and the marines hadn't halted and they were moving on past it. He could feel the sweat trickling down his back, his palms damp. Where were they taking him?

By the time they reached the conference room his knees were jelly and his guts were threatening to throw up the contents of his stomach. He braced himself. Not the airlock. Interrogation then. Possibly torture. He remembered the training he'd had as part of the Colonial military. They'd all had basic torture training - how to hold out, some simple mental techniques to help them through it. It didn't comfort him. With his real memories and personality reasserting themselves he was suddenly faced with all his past anxieties as well. His old self hadn't been brave and fearless. He hadn't been a total wreck, none of that. But a crack soldier? No.

He drew in a deep breath as the door was opened, expecting to see Adama and Apollo, a chair, probably some chains or something to tie him to. Starbuck perhaps. Or one of the bigger marines, trained in the harsher aspects of interrogation. What greeted him made him blink in surprise and confusion. An array of Cylon models, looking clean and well pressed, sitting in a row behind a line of desks like well-brought-up children in school. He stared a moment and then heard Saul's voice.

'Take a seat, Galen. The Commander should get here soon.'

Galen looked around. There were marines around the walls, but only three of them. There was no sign of anyone else. No Starbuck, no Apollo. He looked sharply at Saul. 'What's going on?'

Saul gestured to the three Cylons. 'They wanted to talk,' he said calmly.

'The Commander?'

Saul shrugged. 'He went off to have a pow-wow with Apollo and Starbuck. Or maybe a drink.' A harsh chuckle that didn't lighten the mood. Saul was trying to keep it all light. Wasn't working. He looked back to the Cylons; Leobin, D'Anna and a Sharon. Just three. Where were the others? Why weren't they all here? Were some of the models still following Cavil's lead? He looked at them again. No, these were representatives - Sharon from his line, Leobin from Ellen's and D'Anna from Sam's. It suggested a panel rather than a war. At least he damn well hoped so.

'The tanks?' Galen heard himself ask anxiously. An old reflex; through all of this the one thing they had protected and nurtured were the tanks and the resurrection technology.

'You think we destroyed them?' Leobin spoke now, causing Galen to drag his attention from Saul to really look at the three Cylons in front of him. 'I've checked them myself. Our friend Cavil had hidden yours away and we only came across it when some of the Ones started bleating about it, but like I said, checked them myself. They're fine. And before you ask, yes, there is a resurrection ship in range.'

Galen felt something inside of him relax. They were safe. Whatever happened here now, whatever Adama threw at them, he couldn't ultimately hurt any of them. That was very good to know.


	104. Changes

Chapter 104

Changes

'Dad?' Apollo stood by his father watching anxiously as he tossed back another shot. He glanced over at Starbuck standing silently by his father's desk. She hadn't spoken since they had met the Cylon delegation on the hanger deck - since his father had turned his back on them and walked away, leaving Apollo to snap a quick order to the Sergeant in charge of the marines to find somewhere for the XO and the Cylons until his father was ready to talk. _If _his father was ready to talk.

Apollo had to admit that it had been a shock. Finding out that the Chief had really been a Cylon had been an ugly, but not too surprising revelation. The Chief's interest in Boomer and that whole business with the combing and the water had already cast some suspicion onto him. But the XO? Saul Tigh? Never.

He watched his father pour himself another glass. At this rate he'd be blind drunk before either he or Starbuck could talk him down. Apollo was acutely aware of time, of how pivotal this might be. He had no idea why the Cylons were suddenly here to talk, but one thing he did know was that they were right out of other options. Their only glimmer of hope was the Chief. He had consistently said that he was on their side, that he wasn't their enemy and right now that seemed to be their best - well, their _only_ hope - and besides, suddenly they had so much more to lose; he had found Earth. Or at least he was sure that Daniel Faraday knew where it was. Faraday had so far been unwilling to tell them exactly where it was but Gaeta had plotted a couple of courses in the general direction Faraday had indicated. Faraday had said he would give them the coordinates in exchange for promises of safety for the people from the beach. Clever man. Those reassurances hadn't been Apollo's to give, but if he could get his father to agree, then maybe they could get to Earth after all.

Of course all this was predicated on the Cylons not blowing them out of the sky before they got to that point.

Adama put his hand on the wall in front of him to steady himself, standing over the shelf with the bottle, shot glass still in his hand.

'Dad,' Apollo said more insistently, 'We need to hear what they have to say.'

His father didn't say anything, but Apollo could see by the tightening of his shoulders that this wasn't what he wanted to hear.

Apollo sighed. 'Look, I'll go. I'll talk to them and report back here.' He stood a moment waiting for a response. Adama still stood facing the wall, leaning over the shelf, his back stiff and resolute. Apollo shook his head slightly and turned to Starbuck. 'Wait here,' he said, more sharply than he intended. Her eyes were wide with concern, her lips pursed in that way she had when she was out of her depth and uncertain what to do. Good, that meant she'd stay.

Apollo tried to organise his thoughts as he walked quickly toward the meeting room where the Cylons were waiting. He knew that the Chief had said he had sent out the raider with some sort of computer virus and had repeatedly said he was trying to fix the situation. Maybe this was a trap, but even if it was they were surrounded by base stars and had nothing to lose now. No, trusting the Chief - and now the XO - still seemed like the best course of action. Or the only course of action.

He squared his shoulders before he nodded at the guard and then pushed through the door to the meeting room.

'… so the first thing we need to do is to make sure that the new code is broadcast continually - especially to the fleet-' the Chief was sitting on one side of the large table with Saul at his right elbow, standing stiffly beside him as if unsure of his place. The three Cylons were sat in line opposite him, listening intently. '-and that has to happen now,' the Chief continued, pausing when all eyes flicked up to Apollo. The Chief turned and nodded at him, looking behind him to confirm that he was alone. 'Captain.' he said stiffly, rising to his feet.

'Chief.'

'Take a seat,' the Chief waved to a chair to his left, angled to face him and the other Cylons. Apollo noticed that the Chief had dropped all pretence of military rank. No Sir or Captain now.

Apollo shifted awkwardly and stood where he was. He checked on the three marines in the room. They were all alert, wary, He nodded once at the Sergeant in charge, tacitly taking command. He saw the man visibly relax, his hand tightening slightly on his assault rifle ready for any order that Apollo might give him. That gave Apollo an inexplicable rush of reassurance. He centred his thoughts and focused on the discussion taking place in front of him.

'What about Sam?' Saul Tigh asked. 'He'll be hit by the new code once he gets near the fleet.'

'That should be fine,' the Chief glanced over at Apollo, 'There'll be a whole bunch of Colonials as well. The whole planet surface is fried with radiation and they'll need medical help. Shall we bring them to Galactica?' Galen turned to Apollo.

Apollo frowned. 'You're talking about the colonies?' Apollo asked numbly.

'That's right.'

'There are survivors?' .

'Some.' It was Leobin who answered. 'We tried to finish them off but they wouldn't die.'

Apollo's eyes narrowed.

'Where have you hidden Starbuck?' Leobin continued conversationally, 'And the Commander? Why aren't they here?'

There was an awkward silence. 'I think we should concentrate on matters in hand,' The red-headed Cylon spoke, her voice strong and sure. None of them were cowed, he realised. He wasn't sure what the Chief's relationship to these Cylons was, but it didn't look like he was totally in control.

'What about Maker Ellen?' Leobin pushed. 'When do we get her out of the swampy morass of her own mind?'

'Once we broadcast the signal around the fleet, then she'll reboot with all the others.' Galen said simply. 'And I suggest we do that immediately.'

'And, I repeat, why aren't we having this conversation on our own ship? I don't like feeling threatened.' The red head gestured to the armed marines around the room. 'Especially when we won. We came to get you, and the others will be waiting.'

The Chief gave a long slow sigh. He turned slowly to Apollo. 'Is it alright if we bring the survivors from Caprica onto Galactica?'

Apollo paused a moment and then nodded. They didn't have the space or the facilities, especially with the hospital bay full. But neither did he want anyone going to the civilian fleet before they were screened and thoroughly checked out. The Chief waited a second as if he was about to say something and then abruptly stood up. 'There's a Cylon in the brig with two of the people from that Island. It would be a good idea to separate them - apparently the virus can destabilise the Cylon's reality perception for a while.'

'No. It just hurts like hell and then you pass out.' Leobin said frankly.

'Some of the Ones went completely crazy,' the red-head pointed out. 'I do think you should adjust the program.' she added.

'There's no time.' Galen said firmly. 'It works and that's what matters.'

Leobin shook his head. 'I don't think Maker Ellen would agree with you on that one.'

'Well Maker Ellen isn't here.'

Apollo glanced over to where Saul Tigh was standing silently. _Ellen_. Of course. The Chief stood up. 'But you're right. We're done here.' he turned to Apollo. 'I'm going back with them to the Cylon Basestar. We'll leave Saul here to make sure that there aren't problems once we broadcast the virus.'

Apollo came instantly to alert.

'It'll only affect the Cylon brain.' the Chief said quickly, noting his discomfort. 'Saul will explain it all. Once that's done we'll all be a lot safer and then we can talk.' He shuffled the chair away from him and the three Cylons moved towards the door.

Apollo nodded to the Marine sergeant. 'Escort them to the hanger deck and their ship,' he said tersely, earning himself a black look from the red-headed Cylon. And then they were gone, leaving him alone in the room with Saul Tigh.

'Guess I'd better go find Ellen.' he said softly.

Apollo didn't bother to clarify whether or not Ellen Tigh was a Cylon. 'Who else?' he said simply.

'A woman called Tori. Galen's wife.' They were both silent for a moment. 'The Commander?' Saul asked.

'Getting drunk in his quarters.'

Saul nodded. 'What I would have done.' he said softly.

'You want to tell me what's really going on?' Apollo asked curtly.

Saul gave another heavy sigh. 'Galen is going to broadcast a code that should fix the Cylons on the fleet - make them safe.' He shrugged. 'That's it.' A short pause and then Saul took a step toward the door, 'I need to go find Ellen,' he said again, almost apologetically. Another pause. 'You want to send a couple of marines to guard me?'

Apollo gave a dry laugh. 'Is there any point?'

'Not really.'

Apollo gestured to the door.

Saul straightened, wincing as he pulled his shoulders back with an effort. 'Guess I'll go find Ellen then.'

Apollo didn't move as Saul Tigh quietly left the room.

00000

'She's just waking up.' the Doc led him over to the edge of the hospital bay, pulling aside a curtained area and stepping back to let him through. Adama felt himself sway slightly as he took a step forward. He refused to look into the bay next to Laura's, choosing instead to see the ashen face of Boomer out of the corner of his eye. She still had a godsawful bandage stuck to the side of her face and even without looking directly at her he could see that the wound was angry and infected. He ignored that, ignored what he knew of her, of how they all knew that she had tried to off herself; the Doc's report on the trajectory of the bullet had been clear about that. It hadn't been a cleaning accident, but a deliberate act of self-harm. So what? Had she been trying to get back to her people? Maybe her programming had gone crazy and she had tried to self-destruct. He remembered the water tanks blowing out, remembered how Boomer and the Chief had both been under suspicion, but then remembered how it was Boomer who had found water, Boomer who had blown up that Cylon basestar, Boomer who had fooled them all. She was a great actor and a lousy pilot. Who in all hell would suspect her?

The Cylons were cunning - cunning with the effortless efficiency of computers. It made him sick to his stomach.

That and the liquor.

He'd drunk too much. Again.

He straightened his shoulders and nodded to the Doc, who stood back further, still holding the curtain aside to let him pass. His heart lifted when he saw Laura smiling at him, her face radiant. 'Bill,' she said, pushing herself a little more upright on the bed. The Doc stepped inside the curtain and let it fall behind them.

'Are you going to tell him or shall I?' he said with a smile.

Adama turned to the Doc. 'What?'

'It's gone,' she said, drawing him back with a smaile. 'The Cancer. All gone. I'm clear.'

He stood there a moment not registering what she had just said. He turned back to Doc Cottle, his mouth open in a question.

'We don't know how,' the doc's smile echoed hers, 'but... yeah. All gone.'

'For good?'

The doc shrugged. 'Looks like it, but we'll see. Let's say she's in remission.' He paused, realizing that both he and Laura were watching him expectantly.' He coughed. 'I'll leave you to it,' he said awkwardly thenstepped outside the curtain to leave them alone, closing the curtain behind him.

He turned back to her and watched as her smile faded when she took in his appearcance. 'What's going on? The Doc said we were airlifted off Kobol. What happened?'

He sighed. 'You passed out. We had to evacuate.'

'But the Tomb of Athena-' she stopped herself. 'Elosha?'

'She's fine.'

Laura nodded and then closed her eyes. 'So we're no nearer to finding Earth,' she said softly.

He gave a dry laugh. 'Oh, Apollo says he's found it.' He waved his arm dismissively, 'not that it matters now-' he stopped, somehow not wanting to break the spell of her not knowing, of being around someone who still had hope, who still believed that they were safe and not surrounded by Basestars and Cylons and an XO who had betrayed them-

'You've been drinking,' she said flatly.

He shook his head, looking down for a moment before he faced her, meeting her eyes. He at least owed her that. 'It's over, Laura,' he said quietly.

She frowned, not understanding,

'We've lost,' he continued, the words threatening to choke in his throat.

'Dad?' The voice came from outside the curtain. He sighed as Apollo pushed through. 'Madam President,' he nodded over to Laura and then stood awkwardly at attention. 'I thought I should report on the outcome of the meeting.'

'_Meeting?_' Adama hissed. 'You call that a _meeting?'_

'Woah. Woah. Stop,' Laura demanded, '_Both _of you. What's going on?'

Adama clenched his jaw shut as Apollo looked over at him and took a deep breath, 'Madam President, there are currently seven Cylon Basestars surrounding the fleet.' He paused as she took this in, her shocked expression making him take another breath. Adama didn't move, letting Apollo continue. 'I've just met with a delegation of-'

'They're _machines_,' he growled.

'Yeah. And they have us surrounded.' The heat flashed in Apollo as he replied angrily. 'And you're drunk, dad.' He finished.

'Stop it. Both of you. Bill, _sit down _and be quiet.'

He opened his mouth to say something and then abruptly sat down in the chair next to her bed. He closed his eyes as the room swayed slightly.

'He's right. You're drunk. Continue please, Captain.'

Adama gritted his teeth but kept quiet.

'Chief Tyrol sent out some virus that - well, I'm not sure what it does, but he's going to be beaming it around the fleet.'

Adama shook his head. He couldn't believe that his own son was being so naive. But then Lee always did think too much. It was fine in most circumstances, but not here, not now.

'Saul's a frakking _Cylon_.' He heard himself blurting out from his chair.

'What?' Laura's attention snapped from him to Apollo. 'Captain Apollo, is this true?'

Apollo sighed. 'Yeah. Looks that way. And, um Ellen Tigh.'

There was a short pause as she digested this piece of information. 'So. From the beginning please.'

Apollo sighed again. 'The Chief apparently sent the Raider with a virus that-'

'He sent them our coordinates,' Adama interjected.

'Yeah. That too.' Apollo hesitated.

'And where are they now?'

'The Chief left with the Cylons.'

'And Colonel Tigh?'

'He's still on board. Chief Tyrol is going to send the virus around the ship to any Cylons still on board.'

'And this virus does what, exactly?'

Apollo looked confused for a moment. 'That isn't clear. Reverses some sort of programming.'

'You were in this meeting, I take it?'

'Some of it, yes.'

'And you didn't think to ask?'

'The Cylons and the Chief weren't exactly getting along. I didn't want to foul things up for him.'

'Foul things up?'

Apollo sighed. 'Look, it seems like he's trying to help us and-'

'Bullshit,' Adama growled, then shuffled to his feet.

'Dad?'

Adama nodded to Laura. 'I'll be back.'

'Dad? Where are you going?'

He didn't answer as he headed out of the hospital wing. _Unfinshed business_, he would have said.

xxx

The walk to Saul's quarters went by in a blur. He was vaguely aware of Galactica's familiar gray corridors along with the anxious glances of his crew. He had half expected Apollo to follow him, or Starbuck to turn up and either help him or try to stop him. He'd dismissed Starbuck, told her to get some rest and it looked like Apollo was staying to finish his report to the President. Which left him. A wild card. A drunken, mad wild card. But however drunk, however raging he was, he was still in command of this ship and he still got to decide who was on and who was off it.

He didn't bother knocking on the hatch door, didn't bother announcing his presence in any way, he just walked into Saul's quarters, the quarters he shared with Ellen. A Cylon. Both Cylons.

As he stepped inside Saul didn't look up. He was sitting on the bed staring at his hands. 'Ellen should be here soon,' he said softly, finally daring to raise his head enough to meet Adama's eyes. 'She's joined some women's group or other. Some journalists, some people from the President's group. They meet every few days, have a few drinks, talk, play cards.' He stopped and then stood stiffly. 'You're here to kill me.' He said, then glanced down to where Adama's sidearm would be, frowning when he saw it was missing. 'I'll get you mine if you like.'

Adama put his hand to where his holster would have been, realizing that Apollo or one of the others must have removed it when he lost consciousness on Kobol. He didn't say anything. He wasn't going to use Saul's gun. This wasn't an execution, this wasn't some cold heartless finishing of life.

'I want you off my ship,' he growled.

'Look, Bill, I-'

'Don't you _ever_ dare to use my name again. You have lost that right. You never had that right...' He felt his hands shaking now, his voice trembling in time to the rhythm of his rage.

Saul just stood there. He was silent a moment and then gave a long, heavy sigh. 'If it helps, I didn't know either,' he said softly. 'For thirty years, I had no idea.' He looked down at his hands. 'I only found out today, when Galen- I was beating shit out of him and he did something and-' his voice trailed off. 'It's not how it looks.' he finished lamely.

Adama snapped his fist back and before either of them knew it had connected with Saul's face with a satisfying crunch. Saul reeled, leaning like he would fall over, then stiffly straightened, ready for another blow. It was clear he wasn't going to defend himself. He touched the side of his mouth and winced, looking at the blood on his fingers. For a moment they both looked at the blood. Saul's blood. Looking every bit as human. But they both knew he wasn't human. He was no more human than the bed behind him.

'Saul? Bill? What's going on?'

Adama swung around to see Ellen standing in the doorway. She was dressed up in some skimpy outfit that barely covered her legs and thighs and a neckline that plunged far too low. Her mouth was ringed with lipstick and she was wearing some sickly perfume that immediately made Adama's head swim as she moved into the room and stood by Saul's side.

'Are you boys fighting?' she asked, taking a step into the room. She frowned, sniffing. 'You've been drinking,' she said pointedly to Adama, then looked questioningly at Saul. Saul hadn't moved, his expression hadn't changed. She stared at them both in turn. 'What's going on?' She asked more firmly.

'She doesn't know anything,' Saul said quietly.

'Know what?' Ellen asked immediately.

Saul kept his eyes on Adama for a moment and then turned to Ellen. 'It's fine,' was all he said.

'What's fine? What is going on?'

Suddenly there was a sound like a high pitched scraping of metal, almost outside of Adama's hearing but enough to make him squint up in surprise. He snapped his attention back to Ellen as she gave a cry and crumpled to the floor. Saul dropped immediately to his knees next to her. Adama stood there watching as Ellen started writhing, her whole body going into spasm. Adama looked away. Cylon or not, Ellen's clothes were too skimpy for her to be thrashing about like that. He turned his attention to her face, now contorting in agony, foam already forming around her mouth. Saul was kneeling down beside her, scooping her up into his arms and trying to hold her steady. 'It's OK,' he said softly, 'I'm here. It's OK.'

But any fool could see that it wasn't OK. Adama hesitated for a moment. However much he _knew_ that this woman was a Cylon, he couldn't help seeing her as the same Ellen he'd known for years. His first impulse was to call for the medics and get her to Doc Cottle. He quickly quashed that impulse. This wasn't real. _She _wasn't real. However dramatic or disturbing her suffering was, she was a machine. He watched as she gave another huge spasm, a small trickle of blood now forming at the side of her mouth. She was gasping for breath. He swallowed, trying to detach himself from the scene, trying not to be moved by Saul's familiar and obvious concern.

Any fool could see that Ellen was dying. That much was clear. The high pitched sound changed frequency and was suddenly a loud, eerie boom. Ellen's whole body responded immediately, shuddering once and was still, her eyes now open and staring unseeing toward him. Nothing moved. No sound. Saul knelt holding her in his arms, shock written into the lines on his face. He sat staring at her unbelievingly.

'Oh crap,' he said softly.


	105. Update

Chapter 105

Update

Juliet stood rooted to the spot as she watched the Doc vainly trying to save Boomer's life. The noise had started it all - a weird screeching, insect-like sound that had gone through her mind like a knife scraping bone. She'd felt her ears pop and thensome horrible sensation that left her reeling and dizzy. For a moment she'd thought she was going to pass out, then there was a weird boom that rocked her mind, like she was on an airplane and not only her ears were popping but her whole brain was about to explode out of her head. And then it was gone. She had been left feeling oddly calm, like something had been cleaned up and cleared out. It wasn't something she had ever experienced before, but as she looked around she was sure her eyesight was better and her memory felt... _cleaner _somehow. She took a moment to explore this new sensation. Right up until the Doc and the crash trolley raced past her to Boomer's bed.

The noise hit her like a semi-truck - like sound that had been switched off was now suddenly switched on again. It was as if she'd been deaf or in some bubble of deadened sound that broke with a scream as Boomer's cry ripped through the quiet. Juliet stared in horror. There was already a nurse there and the crash trolley being maneuvered next to her bed and Boomer was covered in sweat thrashing wildly, her arms and legs whipping crazily. The Doc was gesturing to a couple of the more burly marines to put their weapons aside and grab her and hold her down while he tried to prepare some sort of calming shot. Two more nurses pushed their way to his side, quickly and professionally closing the curtain and screening the scene from her view.

She stood a moment, numb with shock. The shouts from the curtained area were still too loud, the room too sharp, her mind feeling jagged and razor edged. It hurt, this clarity. What the hell was happening to her? Too little food and no sleep, she acknowledged. She hadn't eaten for hours and even though she had tried to make a point of keeping her fluids up - drinking as much of the foul, brackish water as she could stomach - she was completely exhausted. What she really needed was sleep. There was nothing she could do for Boomer and standing here wasn't helping anyone. She looked around at the sleeping forms of the other Islanders around her. _Islanders_, was that what she was calling them now? She shook her head ruefully. She needed to sit down. There was a chair beside Jack's bed and she lowered herself onto it as quietly as she could. It still felt too loud. Everything was too loud, too bright, too saturated with color. Even her memory. She experimentally poked the worst one - the sight of Ben over Goodwin's body. It was right there in technicolor. The clarity made her want to vomit. She quickly forced herself to switch, taking a memory from the Mining Crate instead, of her lying in James' arms, safe and secure and - she felt the tears beginning to prickle the corners of her eyes.

James was as gone as Goodwin. And she was here. On a freaking space ship. Boomer had gone quiet and there was that stillness she knew meant that the Doc had either given her a shot and she was OK or had given up and Boomer had died. She was too familiar with that one and had seen it countless times as an intern. Patient dies; stillness, defeat, the sigh of hopelessness. A few seconds of shock and denial before the professional mask returned and the medical staff swept away the remains. One glance over at the curtained space told her everything; two nurses emerging with grim expressions, a sheet covering Boomer's face, the Doc standing staring a moment as if he was wondering what the hell had just happened.

Boomer'd died, that's what happened.

Juliet felt the tears on her cheeks before she knew she was crying. She hadn't known Boomer at all - Boomer had been just a person lying under a tarp in the hot sun, feverish and sweating. But she had known Sharon. Sharon, in all her complexity, her harshness, and over the last few days, in her vulnerability and simplicity, the same desire to protect and save her child as Juliet had seen in every pregnant woman that she had encountered. Like identical twins, Sharon and Boomer had looked the same. It wasn't such a hard stretch to imagine Sharon lying there and -

'Juliet!' Helo's voice blasted through the room and Juliet shot off her chair, her heart in her mouth as she shot to her feet, then ran to Sharon's bay. She hardly dared breathe as she pulled open the curtain, ignoring the two marines who had to step aside to let her through.

Helo was holding Sharon. She was shaking uncontrollably, her eyes rolling back into her head. Suddenly she went rigid and then still. Juliet rushed forward and quickly felt for her pulse. It was fast, but still in the realms of normal.

'The baby?' Helo asked wildly. 'Is the baby OK?'

She took a deep breath, willing herself to calm down. 'We'll get the ultrasound and check,' she said quickly, already turning to shout for one of the nurses for help.

In the minute or so it tood to have the ultrasound over her belly, Sharon had stopped shaking and seemed just about conscious. Juliet's hand shook as she tried to find the baby's heartbeat, praying that it would be there, annoyed at herself for not sounding more resassuring, for not being more competent. She was sure that Sharon could feel her hand shaking as she moved the monitor around to try to find the heartbeat. Silence. Silence. Too much damn silence. And then there it was, the rapid thump thump of the baby's heart. 'The baby's fine,' Juliet felt her whole body sag in relief as the steady heartbeat came over the speaker. Sharon opened her eyes groggily. 'What the hell just happened?' she asked.

Juliet shook her head, 'I don't know.'

'She was asleep,' Helo said, 'Then there was that noise and-'

'Doctor Burke?' Doc Cottle's voice cut over their discussion. He stuck his head through the curtain. 'Everything OK in here?' His eyes widened a little at the sight of the ultrasound and he looked questioningly at Juliet.

'They're fine,' she said and gave him a watery smile.

He grunted. 'I don't know what that was, but we had another brought in - seems like all the Cylons were affected by it.'

'Is Boomer OK?' Helo asked, taking a step toward the curtain.

'No,' the Doc said frankly, putting his hand up to stop him. 'She didn't make it. Sorry,' he added, looking quickly over to Sharon. There was a moment of silence as if he was waiting for something more, but when Helo just stood there nodded to Helo,gave Juliet's arm a squeeze and was gone, closing the curtain shut behind him.

Sharon looked sharply at Helo, frowning at his sharp jawed silence. 'There'll be a resurrection ship nearb,' she said, nodding half to herself, 'She'll download and wake up there. It'll be fine.'

Juliet took a moment to register what Sharon had just said. When she ran it through in her mind again, she stared at her open mouthed. 'What do you mean?' she asked.

'There'll be a new body for her. It'll be better. That wound didn't look like it was going to heal well.'

There was another long silence. Juliet had always made a point of respecting her patients' religious beliefs and she supposed that a space travelling people would include space ships or -

'You look like to need some shut eye.' Helo said bluntly, shutting off her thoughts as if he knew where she was going with it. He bent down to give Sharon a kiss on the cheek, then straightened. 'I'll ask the Doc to sort it out for you. Wait here,' he said firmly, 'I don't want Sharon to be alone,' he glanced briefly at the shadow of the guards the other side of the curtain. Juliet nodded, feeling the same creeping fear beginning to roil in her guts. Sharon sighed and closed her eyes, making it clear that she was in no mood for talking. Sharon had said that Boomer would download into another body. No wonder the people on this ship thought the Cylons were machines and if Sharon had beliefs like that then it certainly wasn't going to help correct that impression. Unless of course Sharon had meant it literally and in spite of what Helo thought she might really believe that she was amachine.

No, that couldn't be right, she was too tired and wasn't thinking straight, she should give up even thinking about it because nothing here was ever going to make sense. She almost laughed at herself when she realized that she was even considering the possibility that Sharon might think of herself as a human-like robot - and she had to admit that in her present state it seemed almost as plausible as the time travel and the space ships and the completely normal looking people surrounding her that spoke perfect English but were supposedly from her future - not to mention the thousands of clones that looked like Sharon and Boomer and no, it _didn't _add up. She suddenly felt dizzy again and suddenly missed James with a stab that took her breath away. For a moment she wished herself back on the Island, taking her chances with Ben and his cruel craziness. Only for a second though. No, she would adjust to this and then, in time, it would get better. At least they were all still alive. Sharon was lying with her eyes shut now, but Juliet knew she wasn't sleeping. Under the closed eyelids Juliet recognized that Sharon was very much alert.

'The Doc's found you a bed to sleep on for a while,' Helo said, pushing through the curtain. 'It's over there, far corner.' He pointed across to where she could see a doorway in the far corner of the hospital bay.

She hesitated, but knew he was right. She was dead on her feet. 'Call me if there's any change,' she said firmly.

He took a breath and looked around the small curtained enclosure and then nodded.

She frowned. 'How safe are you?' She asked suddenly.

He looked uncertain and then shrugged.

Juliet looked down at Sharon, eyes wide open now, then turned back questioningly to Helo. 'The truth,' she added.

Helo shrugged again. 'That depends on the Commander,' he said stiffly. 'So I guess we just wait and see.'.

00000

Red Dress was still screaming. Sawyer had his hands over his ears and had retreated to the back of the room while the marines, ears at least protected by their headgear, had cautiously entered the cell, rifles aimed both at the screaming woman and at Sawyer and Locke. Locke, of course, was trying to calm the woman down. It wasn't working. In fact, if anything, she was screaming louder now. If that was even possible.

When that weird noise had started screeching in their heads Red Dress had collapsed to the floor and started convulsing. That was right before the screaming started. Both he and Locke had been driven to their knees by the sound, holding their heads in a silent scream of agony. Well, he assumed it had been silent, old Red Dress had started screaming so loud that any noise he might have been making had been drowned out by it. The nails on chalkboard sound had lasted only a few seconds, but then had been followed by some sonic boom that had felt like it was exploding the insides of his brain. That was what had knocked him off of his feet. By the time he'd managed to get his shit together Red Dress was laying on the floor making a noise that he was sure wasn't human. And now it went on. And on. Sawyer winced, his hands firmly over his ears. He couldn't help but admire Locke for being within two feet of the woman. He'd be out of that cell and away if he could.

One of marines gestured to Locke to move away and he knelt down while the others stood a few paces away with raised rifles. Suddenly the sound stopped. The woman's eyes were shut and she lay perfectly still. Sawyer breathed again, letting his hands come down off of his ears, feeling his whole body relax at the cessation of the terrible sound. He felt weird. Dizzy. Sick - like he was going to puke his guts out any moment. He made his wobbly way along the floor, shuffling until his back was resting against the end wall of the cell, as far away as possible.

The marine was bending over her again now, right up close like he was trying to tell if she was breathing or not. From where he was, Sawyer couldn't see any sign of life at all. She looked dead. There was a pause while the marine took stock of her, then turned to one of his buddies to say something.

A blur of movement and Red Dress was moving so fast that he could barely track her. She was up on her feet, the rifle in her hand and the marine's arm twisted so hard there was an audible crack of breaking bones. The man cried out and Sawyer started to rise to his feet getting ready to run, though as he had gotten halfway to standing he realized there was nowhere _to _run. Red Dress looked totally deranged, crazy. She had the rifle now and flipped it over so fast that she was up and ready to shoot in less than a second. Sawyer was about to dive for cover when the marines started shooting. Five, six shots right into her. Sawyer froze. He watched it all. Saw the impact move her backwards, saw the scared faces of the marines, saw the guy with the broken arm still there where he had been slammed against the bars. The only one out of his field of vision was Locke, but he heard him cry 'Don't shoot!'

Sawyer suddenly realized the danger he was in and stuck his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender, praying that the marines weren't going to turn and shoot him too, praying that all the bullets had been slowed by red dress and weren't going to ricochet over to his little patch of cell. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Locke, arms up, right by the side wall. Sawyer held his breath, trying not to cover his ears, ringing again after the noise of the gunshots, loud in the confines of the cell.

'Don't shoot!' Locke said again, his voice sounding muffled by the ringing in his ears. Sawyer stood as still as he could, rigidly still. Except for the shaking and the feeling that he was so freaking SICK of waiting for some bastard to shoot the crap out of him. How many times had he been in this position in the last few months?

_Goddammit, too many_.

There were two or three seconds where no one moved. That was good. One shaky breath in and a slow, terrified breath out. Sawyer could feel the shaking spreading to his legs. He was going to fall over in a moment and then they would shoot him for sure. The three marines inside the cell weren't moving. Sawyer realized that the guy passed out by the bars was probably the one in charge. Still no one moved. Then sounds from outside, feet moving, the door bursting open and a squad of at least six heavily armed marines rushed into the room. Sawyer kept his arms in the air and didn't move. He looked at the marines and then down at Red Dress. She was lying on her side, facing away from him, a pool of blood slowly creeping along the floor from a wound in her back. Red blood on the red dress. He closed his eyes and waited. He'd seen enough. He didn't want to see anymore and if they were going to shoot him, well... yeah. Eyes shut.

There was the barking sound of orders, more movement and Sawyer slowly opened his eyes. Rifles aimed at his head. He shut his eyes again. Sounds of a body being dragged along the floor. Open eyes. Red Dress's legs disappearing out of the cell door. Rifles moving away as the marines backed carefully away. The cell door closing. Rifles lowered.

Sawyer finally let himself drop into a shaky heap on the floor, his eyes drawn to the red stain smeared across the floor.

Silence.

He just wished his whole goddammed body wasn't shaking so much.

'What do think it was?' Locke's voice breaking the silence.

Sawyer dragged his brain into operation and half turned his head. Locke was sitting at the back of the cell, right in the corner. Sawyer frowned.

'That noise.' Locke clarified. 'That's what set her off.'

Sawyer licked his lips. They were dry. He was thirsty.

'She saved Desmond's life.' Locke said quietly. 'Put herself in the way of any bullets coming his way. On the beach. I'm surprised none of them hit her.'

Sawyer looked down at the blood stain, remembering the woman as she stood with the gleaming machine, the woman in the tub, the flight on the space ship to get Sharon to safety. Yeah. Red Dress had saved them a few times now. Only before she'd been wearing black. Or maybe it wasn't the same one. Like Boomer and Sharon, maybe there were a lot of them. She hadn't said much while they were there in the cell. The Chief had been taken out and then she'd gone quiet and thoughtful and since neither he nor Locke had anything to say-

'You know, I think I can see better now.' Locke was peering closely at his hand. 'Close up,' he clarified.

Sawyer dragged his eyes away from the blood stain on the floor and automatically looked at his own hand. It was still shaking.

'I can hear better now. And smell,' he added. 'And you stink,' he added for clarification.

Sawyer leant his head back on the wall and closed his eyes.

'I don't think they had any choice,' he continued, as if talking to himself. 'She'd have shot all of us, I reckon. Something about that sound made her crazy...'

Sawyer blotted out the sound of Locke's voice. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to know about why or how or any of that. All he knew was that this place was as brutal and uncompromising as Helo and Sharon's caution had warned him. Both had been careful and worried enough to lay low from these people. Now he knew why.

'So where do you think we are?'

Sawyer laid his head back on the wall and shut his eyes. 'Spaceship,' he said.

'Yeah. I got that. Which one?'

'Galactica. The main one.'

Locke grunted.

'And it's a one way ticket this time,' Sawyer added quietly. Neither man spoke for a moment. Sawyer knew in his guts that the others were probably dead. They had probably all been shoved through an airlock the moment they arrived, just like the Commander had tried to do with him, Locke, Desmond and Red Dress. He had no idea why they had been spared. Some sick joke maybe, but yeah, he felt it now, felt it in his guts. The others had to be dead; Jack, Kate, Juliet... he closed his eyes again, shutting out the image of Juliet drifting off into space, her arms reaching for him as chains dragged her away, her eyes pleading and try as he might he couldn't reach her. She was falling away from him, chains grabbing her down, cold dark pulling her away. He saw it so clearly, saw it like it was happening now and his arms were reaching for her and in his mind he was crying out, 'NOOOOOO' as loud as he could. But she was gone. She was dead. He knew it with a terrible certainty. Juliet was dead.

There was the sound of movement at the hatch door and Sawyer raised his head slowly. He didn't care any more. Juliet was dead; dragged out, dragged down, dragged under. The snapshot of her hands trying to grasp his as she fell to her death was terrifyingly clear. The gut wrenching feeling of seeing her dying right there in front of him, pulled away into the black darkness and-

'Bring him.'

Sawyer's eyes snapped up to see Apollo standing by the cell door and a couple of marines already inside the cell, stepping forward to grab him roughly by the arms. He didn't resist as they chained his hands and ankles and frogmarched him out of the cell door.

This was it. This was his own death now. He glanced over at Apollo who gave him barely a glance before he stood back to let the guards take him out first. He heard the cell door being shut behind him, leaving Locke still inside.

Apollo looked the part, Sawyer reflected dully. Fully the commander's son. Fully in command. He held himself differently here, more of a strutting cockerel than the uncertain minder of Starbuck's excesses. There was none of the quiet thoughtful contemplation now, none of the uncertainty or confusion. There was an air of determination about him. He looked focused. Dangerous. Sawyer felt his knees begin to buckle as the marines half dragged him along.


	106. No-Hoper

Chapter 106

No-Hoper

'I'm not a fool,' Saul still sat cradling Ellen's body in his arms. He was holding her like she was the most precious thing in the worlds - _the destroyed worlds -_ Adama reminded himself. 'I know what she's like,' Saul continued, 'I know how much... trouble she can cause.' He looked up then and Adama saw the tears tracking down his face. 'But that doesn't change anything.' Saul sighed deeply and shook his head. 'Now she's gonna wake up and give Galen and the others one almighty headache. _Christ_. I was hoping to keep her here.'

Adama didn't move. For some reason all his anger had seeped out of him and he was standing in the doorway drunk and deflated. He could see the bruise forming on Saul's cheek where he'd hit him, the scrape of his knuckles where they'd split the skin. Saul never could take a hit. Not like Apollo or Starbuck. Saul had always been soft.

'We're trying to fix this, you know that, don't you?' Saul met his eyes directly, for once in the last couple of hours not sliding but directly there, an honest, frank expression on his face. 'Galen sent a virus around the Cylon fleet. Guess Ellen's brain couldn't handle it.' He paused, glancing down at her then back to Adama. 'We wanted peace - we stopped the war, you know that? The first war. We cut a deal with the Centurions to stop them killing you all and we took them away - far enough so that they wouldn't cause you any trouble. We fixed it.'

He paused, making sure that Adama was following, that he was even interested enough to listen. He wasn't, but there was nowhere else to go. He stood silent and unmoving and didn't tell Saul to shut the frack up. It wasn't that he wanted to hear it any of it- he just didn't have the energy to go anywhere else. 'So... we helped them,' Saul continued, staring at the wall beside him, 'The resurrection technology was from our world - the five of us. We were the only ones who survived. We came over here to get some goddammed peace. That's all we wanted.' He choked on the words, emotion clouding his voice. If he thought Adama was even bothering to listen to this whining crap then, well, he wasn't. It didn't make any sense and Adama didn't expect it to. It was only Ellen's body lying there that was stopping him from- 'And so we made the human-looking models - the ones that looked like us, like real people. We all took a hand designing and building. We were teachers at the University - me and Galen and Sam...' Saul's voice trailed off a moment. '... Ellen wasn't interested in our work, she was more interested in trying to screw her way around all the other members of the department.' He gave a self deprecating laugh and shook his head. 'Guess nothing much changes, does it? It was me, Sam and Galen. We were friends. Academics. We would no more join the military than, well, than anything.

And when it looked like there was going to be a war - a bad one - we figured out a way to get out of there. And we landed right back at the same place. Different human subspecies - but not that different. And we cut a deal with the Cylons and took them off your back.' He paused, as if he sensed he was going round in circles. Adama could feel the sour sickness of a hangover building inside of him. He should go and lie down, sleep it off somewhere. Get out of here, away from _this._ Two paces back and he would be outside the hatch door and he wouldn't have to listen to this crap anymore.

'We all took a hand in designing the human models.' Saul was saying, 'And then Ellen decided to get involved. At first the girls weren't part of the project - they weren't in the university. Tori and Ellen were there because they were married to us - well, to me and Galen. But Ellen insisted and I helped her.' He took a deep breath, 'She designed the crazy ones,' he looked up and held Adama with his eyes. 'Leobin, that was hers. And Cavil. Tori didn't do much better, but her attempt was dumb not crazy.' He let his voice trail off. 'I let her do it. I let her make the one that turned around and poisoned and killed and reprogrammed us all and then damn-well nuked the whole of the world we had been trying to save.' He choked again on the words, emotion rising up out of him, spilling into his voice, his words, his eyes.

Adma had a sudden urge to laugh. 'So you're telling me it was all Ellen's fault?' his voice was harsh and the sarcasm twisted in his guts.

Saul was silent a moment. 'Yeah. And mine. I should have stopped her. Or at least... hell I don't know. Something. She made a model that was so unstable that it went batshit crazy and destroyed most of the human race. He's locked up in one of the isolation cells right now, until we decide what to do with him. I suspect that Galen will want to destroy that model and Ellen will be over there right now trying to stop him.'

Adama frowned. Suddenly he wished Apollo was here to make sense of this. Suddenly there was something in all of this that was beginning to matter. He hesitated.

'We're trying to fix it,' Saul said vehemently, 'Galen is getting more of your people off of Caprica and bringing them here. He's sent the virus around the fleet to re-program any of the human models that are still in hiding. And we're getting Sam back. Then I guess we'll leave you in peace.' his voice trailed away and he stared down at Ellen's body, a picture of weariness and defeat. Adama stood silent and unmoving in the doorway.

'Leobin seems to have taken charge and he's as crazy as Cavil in his own way.' Saul gently pushed Ellen's body off his lap and stood up. 'I'd better get over there and try to calm her down.' He straightened. 'You can kill me now - which will feel like crap but be quicker - or let me take a Raptor. Either way I need to go.'

Adama had a sudden sense that he was moving in a dream world. Everything seemed unreal, like his body and mind hadn't caught up with something important. Maybe it was the liquor, maybe he was getting too old, but either way his mind couldn't take it all in. Whatever it was, he took a small step back as Saul left Ellen's body lying on the floor and walked out the hatch door, giving his arm a gentle squeeze as he passed. For some reason that single gesture didn't make Adama want to hit him.

00000

Sawyer sat heavily in the chair, the chains rattling as his feet shifted to balance his weight. He let his hands rest on his lap and waited as the marines left through the single door until he and Apollo were alone. The marines, he knew, would be waiting just outside the door. So far this looked like a classic interrogation. Bare room, single chair. Sawyer was surprised he'd made it this far. He was quite certain that he was still on his way to his death, still on the verge of being tossed out of the nearest airlock. His hands had stopped shaking and now he was descending into numb terror. He hoped that the numb thing he had going would continue because he didn't think he wanted to take much more of this.

'Sorry about the chains,' Apollo said, without looking the least bit sorry at all. 'But everyone's a bit jumpy and until we know for sure who or _what_ you are we can't take any chances. Not after-' he paused and then stopped speaking.

'Red Dress,' Sawyer said, trying to feign a laugh.

Apollo frowned and ignored him.

'I'm thirsty,' Sawyer said, knowing it probably wouldn't make a difference but he may as well get a drink before he died.

Apollo hesitated and then strode to the door, speaking quietly to whoever waited outside. There was a long minute while he stood there, waiting. A few seconds later he came back with a cup of water. Sawyer held up his chained hands to clasp the cup and cradled it with both hands, sipping the warm, brackish wet stuff inside. It wasn't very nice, but it was familiar, had the same taste and warm consistency as the water they'd drunk on the mining crate for three months.

'Who are you?'

_Here we go. _'Name's Sawyer.'

'Where are you from?'

'Jasper, Alabama.'

'Which is where?'

Sawyer licked his lips. 'Earth.' He said definitively.

'Earth,' Apollo echoed. 'But you were on Galactica before - Doc Cottle saw you.'

Sawyer tried to lean back nonchalantly in the chair. No way was this joker going to drag him down completely. He put on his best drawl and tried to look like he didn't give a damn. 'Got caught in whatever shit was going around. The time travel space travel crazy thing.' He smiled when he said that, looking closely at Apollo to check on his reaction.

'I'm listening.'

Sawyer shrugged, 'Crazy stuff.' he said.

'OK. From the beginning.'

'Well, I was born in Jasper, Alabama...' Sawyer began, feeling his old defiance beginning to come back.

'On Earth?'

'That's right.'

'Where on Earth?'

'In the good old Us of A,'

'And that is what, a continent?'

Sawyer sighed. This was going to take a while.

00000

Adama nodded to the guard and pushed open the hatch. Apollo was standing in front of the prisoner, arms folded. The prisoner was the one with the shaggy beard and hair. He smelled of sweat. Nervous sweat. The kind of smell that comes off of raw recruits when they are trying not to shit their pants. Apollo had the guy in chains, Adama noted with approval. He checked himself, realizing how irrational that thought was. But someone in chains at least felt controlled, unlike the rest of this crap shoot. He had stood and watched Saul leave on a Raptor - suddenly exhibiting flying skills that he had never seen in the man before. Saul had never shown any facility as a pilot - or interest in planes beyond what he needed to get by in the military. And there he was flying that Raptor like a pro. It left him feeling sick to the stomach. More deception. More lies. He was sick of the lies. At least here, with Lee, there was something smacking of truth. This guy in chains, sweating his fear out, looking like he was about to be thrown out of the nearest airlock. Adama shouldn't have found a sort of comfort in that, but godsdammit, he did.

What the hell was he turning into?

'Dad?' Apollo turned to get his attention. 'You might like to hear this.'

The guy swallowed nervously as he looked Adama up and down. Adama stared back impassively, feeling something strengthening inside of him.

'So. You're from Earth. You accidentally pressed the FTL panel and started bouncing about in time and space and then you ended up on a mining ship orbiting Picon with Helo for three months.'

The man licked his lips nervously, looking at Adama before he answered. 'Yeah. That's right.'

Adama snorted. 'You believe this?' he asked incredulously.

'I'm sure Helo can confirm it, but yes-'

'Helo is so wrapped up in that fracking Cylon that he'd say anything,' Adama waved his hand dismissively and turned to leave. He respected his son most of the time, but this, _this _was too much. Sure, Lee needed hope and this little project he had going was as good a way as any to spend the last few hours of his life, but Adama didn't have to be part of it.

'Wait. Dad.'

Adama sighed and paused. Apollo met his gaze with his own. Adama knew that look. Lee's determined defiant stare that meant he wasn't going to listen to reason and sure as hell wasn't going to back down.

Adama sighed. Give me one good reason...'

'Look, what this means is that these people have been traveling through _time_, Dad. Sawyer says there's no space travel on his world - beyond an attempt to make it as far as their moon. No FTL, no space flight, some atomic theory but using fossil fuel energy and -'

Adama shook his head wearily. First Saul and now this. It was too much.

'From what I understand,' Apollo pressed on, 'These people could well be from our past. I think they are from the lost tribe and.-

Adama put up his hand. 'Fine. You have your dream son. You believe whatever you want. You can even get Gaius Baltar to run a DNA check to see if it's true. But right now we have bigger problems than this. Earth was a dream, a myth. Now we're facing reality. The Cylons are about to wipe us out. You really think this is a valuable way of spending your time? Talking to this half crazed savage who's making up whatever he thinks you want him to hear in order to save his life? I didn't raise you to be that naive.'

Apollo shook his head. 'If Daniel Faraday is right then we've found Earth. If the Chief can get the Cylons to back off and leave us alone then we can go there and start again. Dad, this could work.'

Adama shook his head wearily. 'You have too many 'ifs' there, son,' he said more gently. He gave a long sigh. Why take away the boy's hope? Why rub his face in the hopelessness of their situation? Everyone needed hope. 'Fine. You do what you like.' He turned to go, ignoring the eyes of the ragged prisoner. 'I'll go see how the President's doing.'

'I've spoken to her,' Apollo said quickly. 'And she agrees with me.'

Adama resisted the urge to plant his fist in the wall beside him and paused before he took a deep breath to control himself. He reminded himself that he had had too much to drink and not enough time to let it go through his system. He stood with his back to his son for a moment and then without turning said, 'Order Gaius Baltar to do the DNA tests. Then we'll see.' He didn't wait to see what reaction that got him before he left his son in the room. He didn't even bother to close the hatch door behind him.


	107. Another Hatch

Chapter 107

Another Hatch

Juliet woke to the sound of raised voices. She blinked sleep away, not sure for a moment where she was. She was staring up at gunmetal gray; a low ceiling. More shouting. _Galactica_. The military hospital. _James gone_. That last thought was like a harsh hand pushing down on her chest, pushing down her mood, her hope, dragging away any energy she had to keep going through this. With an effort she pushed herself off the bed and came shakily to her feet. The voices came clearer. She didn't recognize who it was, but she could hear that, for sure, some of the people from the beach camp had finally woken up.

'And where the hell do you think you're taking us? You can point that weapon at me all you like, but I'm a US citizen and I demand to see whoever's in charge here.'

Juliet recognized the voice now - it was one of the people from the Island - Yogurt or Frogort or something.

'Dude, he's right. I don't think pointing guns at us is, well, it's not nice, man.' She looked over to see Hurley's lumbering form standing next to Frogurt. She rolled off the bed, wincing at the stiffness of her shoulders and back where she had been lying still for so long. She must have been asleep for a while as the Islanders were all waking up now - quite a few of them were huddled around Hurly and Frogurt, though there was still no sign of Jack or Kate-

'Look, all we want is to speak to someone in charge and try to straighten this out,' Claire was there too, holding Aaron in her arms, the baby like a badge of defiance, almost daring the marine in front of her to behave badly with the infant in her arms. This was Juliet's cue to step forward. She had always classed all mothers as her patients, and there was no way in all hell she was going to let this get out of hand. She signaled quickly to the nearest nurse. 'Where's Doctor Cottle?' she asked quickly.

'Oh, he's gone to the vice President's lab - something about a DNA check,'

Juliet smiled a thanks and called over to the marine. 'What's going on?'

'Everyone's being checked over and then moved down to one of the storage bays. We need to get the hospital bay cleared as soon as possible. '

'I think the commander is expecting trouble,' the nurse beside her murmured as an aside. 'There are Cylon base stars in the area,' she clarified. Juliet nodded. That was right. The people on Galactica were at war. With the machines. Or something. She looked over to check on Sharon, glancing over to where the curtained off bed was still surrounded by three soldiers. That was good. It meant she and Halo were still there and hadn't been taken away or killed or- she took in a deep breath, trying to control her fear. She was under no illusions that they were safe here. She knew they weren't.

Before Juliet could think of a suitable response there was movement at the hatch door and several more heavily armed marines appeared. They looked like a cross between riot police and shock troops, dressed in black with enough armour strapped onto them to withstand a military assault. Apollo was at their head, his head high, his eyes taking in the scene immediately.

Frogurt must have sensed that this was the go to man because he immediately rounded on him.

'I demand to see the nearest US Consul,' he said with an air of superior entitlement that made even Juliet wince.

'This is a military base and we need to keep the hospital fully operational,' Apollo said clearly, raising his voice so that it could be heard by everyone. 'So for the moment we're taking you to one of the storage areas.' There were murmurs of disquiet. 'You'll be perfectly safe there,' Apollo continued. 'Please go as calmly as you can. Once everyone has woken up we can arrange a proper meeting.'

Juliet expected howls of complaint from Frogurt, but after a thoughtful pause he merely nodded resentfully.

'So what was it?' Claire asked, 'Was it poison?'

Apollo shook his head, 'We're not sure. The Doc is looking into it.'

'Well, wouldn't we be safer being monitored here in the hospital?' she pressed, holding her baby more tightly.

Apollo looked pointedly at Juliet and she took a deep breath and stepped forward, 'There's no sign that anyone is in any danger,' she said smoothly. 'A number of us have also experienced this and while we... _suspect_ that it might be something on the Island, there doesn't seem to be any lasting harm.' All bullshit, she knew, but she couldn't tell them the truth, that it was the time travel, the space travel, the movement between worlds that had done it. Besides, the kernel of truth was there - there _wasn't _any danger - at least not from whatever had knocked them all out. She didn't think so anyway, so she wasn't lying about that.

'You're an _Other_,' Frogurt said suspiciously, 'So why should we believe you?'

'I am a doctor,' she said curtly, 'And I was on the Island for years so I know what I am talking about. I can say with confidence that none of you are in any medical danger.'

There was silence for a moment as everyone digested this. Apollo stood watching silently. She had known that he was a soldier - all the gun slinging and swaggering around in uniform told her that. What she hadn't realized was that he was also a skilled negotiator. He waited patiently as Frogurt seemed to consider this for a moment before nodding and then turning towards the marines. 'What we don't like is having the guns pointed at us.' he said huffily.

Apollo turned to the marine and said something quietly to him, too quiet for any of the others to hear. The man nodded once and the rifle was lowered, though the marine stayed very much alert and Juliet had no illusions that the gun could be up and firing almost immediately.

Apollo stood for a moment as the people shuffled off, led by one marine and followed by three others. Juliet swallowed in consternation. Had she done the right thing? She had just assisted Apollo in herding these people to some storage area where they could be kept shut up like animals. No, she hadn't assisted with anything- all she had done was reassure them that they weren't going to die of gas poisoning on the way. Even so, the taste of it felt bitter in her mouth and she cursed herself for colluding in this. Something wasn't right. _This _wasn't right. Where was Jack, or James - even Sayid or Kate who could stand up for these people and help her to do the right thing? She counted off seven civilians; Hurley, Claire, Frogurt and four others that she didn't recognize by name. Three women and another man. Apollo stood silent and thoughtful for a moment before he turned, meeting her gaze. He walked over to her.

'Will they be alright?' she asked nervously.

He shrugged. 'For the moment. You're from Earth,' he said simply, pre-empting anything else she was about to say. The shock of the question silenced her, giving him a moment to examine her reaction closely. She stood there uneasily under his scrutiny. After a long pause he said, 'Gaius Baltar has taken some DNA samples. He's going to try and figure out exactly who you are. My father believes you are Cylons. You know what that means, don't you?'

She felt the color drain from her face.

'Good,' he said, reading her correctly, 'Then you'll understand why I am going to have to detain you in the storage bay as well. The Doc says you've been very useful and I hope this will all be resolved very soon. But until then, I have my orders...' his voice trailed off.

She ran her hands nervously through her hair. This was it then. So far she had enjoyed some sort of weird Doctor immunity, partly the fact that she had been here before, at the beginning, when the place was nuked and- she pushed those images out of her mind. No one had really asked where she had come from, where she had been in the time that had intervened since then. Or she had assumed time had gone by. She had no idea how much time - or even if this was a time later or before that point. Later, she was sure. Yes, because they talked as if they had seen her before, in her past. She felt a surge of irritation at her own stupidity - at the way her mind couldn't wrap itself around all the facts and come out with something that made any sense. Her mind wasn't working right and neither were her feelings. She missed James with an ache that was physical, right there in her guts, a concrete pain that stole her breath away when she allowed it to.

'What about Jack?' she heard herself saying, knowing that Apollo and Jack had sort of gotten along. And that Jack was in charge here.

'He hasn't woken up yet,' Apollo said simply. 'The Doc has insisted that he makes sure that everyone wakes up OK before they are... detained. He'll be moved when he awakens.'

Something inside her chilled a little more, but she nodded stiffly running her hands through her hair again. It felt matted and awful and she suddenly just wanted to hide in a hot shower where she could pretend none of this was happening, feel the water running down her face, hiding her, cleaning her, screening her from whatever was going to happen next. Instead she was filthy, rank and fed up with her own smell.

'We're sending some food,' Apollo was saying, 'Maybe you could oversee its distribution.'

She came back to reality, taking a deep steadying breath before shaking her head. 'They don't trust me,' she said quietly.

He frowned but didn't follow that one up, choosing instead to gesture to another marine - there seemed to be a limitless supply of them here, all looking the same, dressed in battle armor, all black with helmets and armed to the teeth. Was this a different one or had he already delivered Frogurt and the others and come back?

'I'd like to check on Helo and Sharon first,' she said firmly, refusing to leave them here without first warning them.

Apollo gave her a curt nod and then stepped back to allow her a clear path to Sharon's curtained off cubicle.

00000

Sawyer scanned the latest arrivals for any sign of Juliet. He stood passively as the guards removed the chains from his hands and feet. He was here in the dingy storage area - bigger than the small cupboard he and Juliet had first found themselves in on their initial arrival on Galactica all those months ago. This place was much, much bigger, with room for at least a hundred people provided they didn't mind getting a little cozy if everyone wanted to sit down. There were only around seven or eight of them so far - with Hurley and Claire and of course Frogurt. They all watched silently as the chains were finally removed from his hands and feet. No one commented on it, as if chains and Sawyer were not worthy of notice, as if yes of course Sawyer was the one who would end up threatened, chained, beaten, picked on. None of them seemed surprised that he had his own escort and that they clearly weren't friendly.

He stood in the middle of the room and looked around. There was practically nothing here in this dingy space. Even the lights were dim, the barest minimum to see the couple of large crates dotted around the space. He wandered up to one but it was sealed tight and he couldn't figure out how to get it open. Frogurt was pacing the room, remonstrating with the walls, the ceiling, anyone who would listen to him. There was no sign of Jack or Kate. But the sight of Hurley and Claire and the others gave him hope. They hadn't been killed, hadn't been thrown into space. And from the way that Apollo had been talking it looked as if they weren't going to be. Sawyer looked around for any sign of Locke or Daniel Faraday.

'Dude,' Hurley strode up to him and threw his arms around him. Sawyer gasped as the hug squeezed all the air out of him.

'Who are these people?' Frogurt was in his face demanding. 'Do you know who they are? Are they pirates?' Claire stood back a little way, holding Aaron protectively.

'How's Charlie?' he asked reflexively, realizing that he had no idea whether he had survived their rushed evacuation from the Island.

There was a silence that he couldn't interpret, but Claire's pinched exhaustion told him that the news may not be good.

'Jack?' Sawyer asked.

'All still out of it.' Hurley said earnestly, 'The Doc said there was some kind of nerve thing that was knocking us all out.'

'The Doc?' Sawyer said, trying to sound like he didn't care. 'Juliet?'

'Yeah, she said it was fine.'

'She's in the hospital?'

'Yeah.'

Sawyer felt his breath whooshing out of him in relief.

'So where the hell are we?' Frogurt asked. 'These people aren't US marines. Whatever they say. These people are not with the US navy.'

Sawyer blanked him out as the door opened again and a guard appeared. His heart leaped as he saw Juliet stepping awkwardly passed, taking a few uncertain paces into the room before turning as the door closed behind her. He saw her take a few more awkward steps, her eyes scanning the room until they rested on him. There was a moment of surprise as she registered his presence and then she moved, coming at him at a run.

Three paces and she was in his arms, her face in his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. He could feel her trembling. They stood there for what felt like forever. At least he wanted it to be forever. He didn't care who saw them, didn't care about Hurley or Frogurt or any of the others. This moment could go on for the rest of his life. Just him and her and both of them still alive. He had been so sure that she was dead-

'I thought I'd never see you again,' she said softly, her face still buried in his shoulder.

'I thought you were dead,' he countered with a chuckle that was more relief than humor.

He held her tighter, his arms wrapped around her like he would never let go.

'I'm sorry,' she mumbled into his shoulder.

He gave another half laugh. 'Ain't nothin' to be sorry for,' he murmured.

'For leaving you behind.' She sighed. 'I just wanted to go home,' she said softly.

He frowned, amused. 'So you decided to go to the dead-end spaceship sometime in the future where-' He stopped as he felt her shaking her head. He pulled back to see her smiling ruefully.

'Yeah, I know it doesn't add up. But I couldn't stay on the Island, I couldn't-' she took a deep breath.

'Well, you were right,' he said grudgingly. 'Ben's people showed up with about thirty shooters. You got out at the right time.'

She stood silently, taking in that piece of information. 'So you came back because-' he saw the hurt in her eyes right before something closed down and she took a small step back. He moved forward, enfolding her again.

'Big mistake,' he said firmly, 'I ain't letting you go again.' He said it as much to convince himself as anything. Jack wasn't here. Nor was Kate. He knew that if they had been here, in this small room, that he wouldn't be talking to Juliet like this. Hell, he wouldn't be anywhere near her with Jack the protective hound making sure that no one even got a sniff of her. He sighed. This wasn't going to be easy, not like before, not like when it was just the two of them.

There was a gasp from behind them and Sawyer turned to see Hurley staring open mouthed at something over his left shoulder. 'Dude,' he breathed. Sawyer turned to see John Locke striding into the room. 'You died.' Hurley said quietly as the door closed behind him. 'The hatch,' Hurley clarified, 'It went, like, kablooey. We kind of figured you were dead.'

Locke smiled and clapped Hurley on the shoulder, giving him an enigmatic smile. How had he survived? Sawyer hadn't been there when the hatch blew up - he'd been making his way back from his little holiday on Zoo island where the Others had had a fun time trying to kill him. But he remembered coming back and seeing the crater. Desmond and Locke had both been in there. No one could have survived that. But of course they had. Sawyer turned to look down as Juliet slipped out of the circle of his arms. She looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. He didn't care anymore. He'd hold her the whole day and they could all think what they liked. They were on a freaking spaceship and once everyone clued into that one then whether or not he and Juliet had a thing going wasn't going to even come up on their radar.

'I'm guessing you had a chat with Apollo?' Locke turned to him.

'Yeah.' Sawyer said.

'Smart guy,' Locke turned to see who else was in the room. 'No sign of Jack or Sayid?'

Sawyer shook his head. 'Still sleeping.'

Locke grunted. 'Desmond?'

Sawyer shrugged.

'He'll be fine,' Juliet said quietly from beside him. She hesitated. 'The bullet didn't do too much damage. Doc Cottle is a good field surgeon.' She stopped as if she had said too much, letting her voice trail to silence.

Locke just nodded.

'What about Charlie?' Claire stepped forward, Aaron still in her arms. Didn't she ever put that child down? Sawyer guessed there wasn't anywhere to put him right now. There was nothing here - no tables, no chairs, no beds. Just the empty space with crates around dotted here and there. Like they'd been dumped here because no one could think of anywhere else. Which was probably what had happened.

'Charlie's condition is serious but stable. He lost a lot of blood, but there's a good chance he'll pull though,' she was choosing her words more carefully now and Claire could see that.

'I want to see him,' she said firmly.

'I don't think that's going to be possible for a while,' Locke said quietly, 'I don't think they plan for us to go anywhere.'

'Who are _they_?' demanded Frogurt, 'Who are these people?'

Locke turned on him with a smile, 'Spacemen from the future,' he said with obvious relish.

All it earned him was a sneer from Frogurt.

Locke gave him another enigmatic smile.

Hurley shook his head. 'Dude,' he said softly. Sawyer looked more closely at him. He had been friendly with Racetrack - and Sawyer couldn't believe for one moment that over all the days they had spent together, Racetrack hadn't said something. Well, he reflected ruefully, she probably had said a lot, but the question was whether or not Hurley understood its meaning. He and Juliet had spent months on that mining crate. One thing he had learned from that was that something could be so far outside of any realistic expectations that it made it almost impossible to see it. Hell, he and Juliet had stood there staring at Picon - a freaking _planet _floating right there in front of them - without really seeing it for what it was. No, Hurley's thoughtful surprise was real. Even if Racetrack had said a whole bunch of stuff, Hurley hadn't heard any of it.

There was the sound of the hatch opening again and Sawyer looked up to see more figures. The guard poked his head in first, checking to see where the rest of them were, then stepped back to allow more of the beach survivors through. Sawyer saw Bernard and Rose, followed by Kate and another woman he recognized but whose name he hadn't bothered to learn, then Jack flanked closely by Sayid. As soon as he walked in the room, Jack immediately took charge. Not by saying anything; he didn't have to do that. He controlled everyone there just by being. Somehow his very presence made the room shrink. Too much Jack in it. Sawyer immediately felt like leaving with the guards. He'd take the solitary of the prison cell.

Jack stopped when he saw Locke and frowned.

'You survived the hatch explosion?' Sayid asked from beside Jack.

'Sure looks that way,' Locke's smile was almost predatory.

Jack didn't say anything, but he took a quick inventory of the room, his eyes pausing as he noted Juliet's presence. Sawyer immediately stiffened. Kate took a step toward him. 'You OK?' she asked, almost conspiratorially. He had his eyes on Juliet; she looked scared now, her eyes widening, flicking from Jack and then over to Sayid. He swallowed. He didn't want to do this again, but could feel the pattern already imposing itself. Saint Jack as Juliet's protector, Sayid as the assassin waiting in the wings. Kate there, distracting and - well, whatever it was she did. He took a deep breath, ignoring Kate and taking a step toward Juliet. She looked over at him, the fear now plain in her eyes. He stepped up to her and put his hand on her arm. Jack was already frowning in disapproval. Sawyer took another step closer to Juliet and put his arm protectively around her shoulder. 'I told you to leave her alone, Sawyer,' Jack took a step forward.

There was a polite cough from Hurley. 'Um. I think, like, well. They know each other?'

Jack looked over to him then back to Sawyer and Juliet.

'We're together.' Sawyer growled.

Silence. Sawyer could see Jack's mind computing - the simple fact that there had been no time for Sawyer and Juliet to get together, except the time he had been out cold. Instant attraction. Sawyer gave him a victorious smile. He could feel Juliet trembling but she didn't move away. Thank god she didn't move away.

Hurley quickly stepped forward between them, 'Hey, you seen Charlie? Is he OK?'

Jack forced himself into professional doc/savior mode and frowned. 'I don't know. They didn't let me get a look at him.'

Sawyer eased his arm off of Juliet's shoulder. This was her cue and they both knew it. She took a deep breath, visibly pulling herself together. Suddenly Sawyer could see what that was costing her - what the professional doc thing was costing her. She was trying to keep up with Jack, he realized. 'He was stable about an hour ago,' she said carefully, then added, 'Doc Cottle had to operate again, but he's a good field surgeon. He found some internal bleeding and managed to find the cause of it. He gave him another transfusion and-' she stopped speaking, suddenly aware that everyone was hanging on her every word. 'He's still in critical condition,' she finished, looking around warily, 'But stable.'

Jack was nodding knowingly. 'I need to see him.'

'Well, that ain't gonna happen while they have us holed up in here,' Locke said dryly.

Sawyer had to agree. Charlie would have to wait.

There was a scraping sound and then movement as the hatch door opened and Apollo strode into the room. Jack immediately turned to face him. Apollo held up his hands before anyone could say anything, raising his voice so that it carried to everyone. 'We're having to keep you here as a quarantine precaution. We detected some sort of chemical residue on that Island and we need to check it out and make sure that it's safe. I'm sure you'll understand why we're -'

'Why all the armed guards?' Frogurt's voice carried over Apollo's, silencing him.

Apollo took in a deep breath. 'We're a military ship and I'm sure that you've heard that we were fired upon as we tried to leave the Island. A precaution.'

It was clear that Frogurt wasn't convinced. Nor was Sawyer - but then he knew what was really going on. What he couldn't figure out was why Apollo was playing it so cool. He'd spent the best part of an hour being quizzed by the man - all about Earth, his home, the politics, the technology, how they had gotten to the Island, who the Others where, who Jack was. Everything he could think of. Sawyer had told the truth. Mostly. He'd been vague about his own past, his own reasons for being on that plane, but most of it had been accurate enough.

'So who are you? Who do you work for?' Frogurt had stepped in front of Jack.

Apollo paused.

'You mercenaries or marines?'

'We're official,' Apollo said. Sawyer almost smiled. He could see that Apollo didn't want to lie. Not outright, anyway. That was kind of comic given what else was going on.

Locke stepped forward, laughing openly. 'Oh c'mon. You don't need to hide the truth from us. We are on a spaceship and we've traveled through space and time. That's really it, isn't it?'

Apollo looked directly at him, his eyes unblinking. 'We are in space,' he said quietly, 'I don't know about the rest of it.'

Jack turned immediately to Locke, who held up his hands, 'don't tell me I'm crazy, Jack, just take a look at the evidence around you. Get them to give you a tour. This is a spaceship and we are in space.'

Apollo stepped in, 'Look, there's no need for anyone to be alarmed-'

'Wait a minute-' Jack was frowning now, annoyed. 'You expect us to-'

Apollo sighed wearily, 'I don't expect anything. Like I said, there was some poisonous gas on the island and we need to keep you quarantined from the rest of the crew.'

'Spaceship?' Frogurt interjected, 'Who the hell is talking about spaceships?'

Apollo didn't answer, and anything he might have said was interrupted by the sound of Locke laughing at his consternation. Sawyer wished Locke had kept his mouth shut. Like Apollo, he couldn't see what good it was going to do.

'Look, I have other duties to attend to, but I wanted to reassure you that you will be well looked after and that we have no - hostile intentions toward you.'

Sawyer gave a snorting laugh, remembering the scene outside the airlock only hours before. That and the shooting of the woman in the red dress. No. No hostile feelings. Very reassuring.

Apollio gave him a sharp, but understanding glare, then turned and left the room.

'Well, that was helpful of you,' Sawyer said to Locke.

Locke shrugged. 'Just tellin' it how I see it.'

'What the hell was that?' Frogurt asked.

'That was Apollo covering his ass,' was Locke's cryptic reply.

'This is getting kind of weird?' Hurley said softly.

'And the Island wasn't?' Locke retorted. Sawyer could swear he was enjoying this.

'I'm scared,' Claire was clutching Aaron a little tighter. 'What are they going to do? What did he mean we were in space?'

'We're in another hatch,' Sayid said, looking around at the gray walls. 'They are playing games with us. It is clear that we are still on the Island.'

Locke gave a snort of laughter.

Kate had so far kept quiet, standing between her and Jack looking confused and annoyed in equal measure. He could see her getting antsy, nervous. Now that they were off the island and under the control of some sort of officialdom, she was clearly wanting to run, to move, to get out of there. She glanced uneasily over at the hatch doorway, now closed and locked.

'Nowhere to run to,' he murmured to her quietly. 'This is a ship in the middle of nowhere.'

She gave him an irritated look, like she didn't like him reading her so accurately. He smiled back, inclining his head to show he understood.

'So what now?' Frogurt was saying.

'We wait,' Locke sat down pointedly with his back against one of the crates in the middle of the room, 'until they figure out what to do with us.'

Sawyer glanced over at Juliet. All talk of them being together, of being a couple had been totally eclipsed by Apollo's arrival and Locke's revelations. He wasn't sure whether he was relieved or irritated. All he knew was that he was tired. Real tired. And hungry. He wondered vaguely whether they'd be getting more of that color-changing food.

No one spoke for a while. Kate was looking at Locke like she was trying to figure him out. She edged a little closer to him 'We're still on the Island, aren't we?' she said, echoing Sayid's thoughts.' Sawyer didn't answer. What could he say? 'You think he's safe?' she hissed after a pause.

'Huh? Who?'

'Locke.'

Sawyer sighed.


	108. Truth and Lies

Chapter 108

Truth and Lies

'I'm fine,' Laura insisted, standing up and straightening her clothes. 'Actually, I haven't felt this fine in a long time. So. Tell me what's going on. Where's Captain Apollo?'

Adama stood awkwardly, not quite sure where to put himself. Now that he was here, hung over and numb with what was happening… He needed to be sharp and he wasn't. He should have been sober. He should have been the commander that the fleet, that his crew needed. What the hell had happened to him. He had been convinced that they were at the very end of the end game - the gun had been at their heads and all that had been left was for the Cylons to give the trigger a tiny squeeze and _boom!_ that would have been it. Game over. He'd drunk himself stupid to numb the pain of that, to make the last hour or so more bearable. But now, suddenly, Laura Roslin was all business. She was acting like it wasn't all over. She was wrong.

He swayed a little. The drunkenness was wearing off, but the nausea was settling in his head now, if that was even possible. He should probably drink more water or something. Or maybe get some more ambrosia down him. Hair of the dog. There still didn't seem much point in getting himself sober and alert. It was still over, however positive and beaming Laura looked. Her dumb hope made it worse - more poignant somehow. Part of him, he knew, had already given up. Finding out that the Chief had been a Cylon had been bad, but what had really finished him off was when Sau-

_'Bill_. Focus.'

He dutifully turned his attention to her. She looked good. Focus. Did she want him to look at her, admire her? _Focus on what?_ On the facts, maybe? On the fact that around a dozen Cylon Base Stars were circling their position? Or the fact that most of the higher level of his command chain had also turned out to be Cylons? They were so compromised there wasn't much left _to_ focus on.

'Where is Captain Apollo?'

He finally allowed his eyes to meet hers. He wasn't surprised by the steely determination that he saw there. And yeah, she did look better. The dark lines under her eyes were gone now and there was a freshness about her that hadn't been there before - that he had never seen in her before.

'Bill, what is wrong with you?'

'Saul's a Cylon,' he heard himself say.

'Yes. I know.'

'He went back to the Cylon ship when... when Ellen died.'

'She died?' Laura looked interested now.

'Yeah. That noise - the Cylon noise. It killed her.'

'And Boomer,' Laura said thoughtfully.

'Easiest way to get their agents back, I guess,' he said, almost to himself. Which meant that the Chief was recalling all the Cylon agents. For what? Apollo said he was clearing out the Cylon agents, making them safe, but killing them was the same as getting them off of Galactica and the fleet. Ellen had gone and now Boomer. Who else? How many more had there been? It would be easy enough to trace- he only needed to know how many sudden deaths there had been in the fleet in the last hour. He realized he should already know the answer to that question. He should have been in command, fully in command and he wasn't. He had dropped the ball, and in doing so let everyone down. He didn't know squat, he realized. He was out of his depth and drowning. And yes, Laura was right to ask for Apollo. He seemed to have more of a handle on what was going on than this old man.

'And where is Starbuck?'

'I told her to go get some rest. She was becoming a liability - been on duty too many hours straight. It was affecting her judgement.' He realized when he said it that he could have been talking about himself. He dragged in a breath, refusing to meet her eyes. 'I said I didn't want to see her for the next eight hours.'

Laura nodded as if she understood why. She didn't. She didn't know about Starbuck shooting that civilian. He was still in a critical condition with Doc Cottle understandably pissed about the whole thing. The Doc didn't like extra work, he'd told him. More questions could come later, about exactly what had happened, but for now he'd thought it best to keep Starbuck out of the loop. Not that there was a loop, more of a crazy gyration than anything else. The whole world was spinning around. What he hadn't imagined was how unbalanced he would feel without Saul, how much he'd relied on the man to be right there, on his left hand side, a constant presence. Like some old married couple, he was lost without him. The thought made him almost spit with disdain.

'So,' Laura's voice briskly pulled him out of his reverie. 'Chief Tyrol has beamed the computer code that will hopefully de-activate the Cylon agents within the fleet, correct?'

He looked at her like she had sprouted wings.

'Captain Apollo briefed me,' she explained, 'He said that Chief Tyrol was trying to undo the programming that had been layered onto the Cylon brain.'

Adam just stared at her. Was she really buying into this?

'Wake up, Bill,' she said more sharply. 'Your best friend turned out to be a Cylon. So what are you going to do, stand around like a zombie feeling sorry for yourself? You have a ship to run, and a lot of people depending on you. You need to pull yourself together and stop walking around like you don't want to see what is going on. From what Apollo has said, we still have a chance here and you need to step up and stop acting like a child.'

Her words came like a slap in the face. He know he deserved it. It didn't take more than half a a second's self-examination to see that. She was right, mostly - but wrong about one crucial thing. 'Chance?' He growled, 'You think we have a chance? We have NO chance.'

'Have you even been listening?' Her voice was a hissed warning not to let his own voice grow too loud. 'Chief Tyrol is trying to help us.' she said slowly and carefully as if she really was talking to a child.

'There is no chance,' he said curtly. 'You are deluded if you really believe that.' He regretted the words as soon as he said them. He didn't want to burst her bubble, piss on her parade, foul up the last few hours of her life. So much for giving her some hope, he couldn't even do that right. Maybe he should listen to his own order to Starbuck and go to his quarters and shut himself inside until it was all over.

'I choose to take a path that might give us survival,' she said sharply, _'That _is my duty as President and _that _is what I am going to do. Whether or not it will work is irrelevant at this stage. What are you going to do? Wander around like a kid who is sulking because his best friend betrayed him? Get over it.'

She waited a beat or two to see what he would do. He didn't do anything. She was wrong, of course, clutching at straws. Too much hope - the strange remission in her disease had given her too much hope. Still, it wasn't right to take that away from her. They would die, and soon, but at least he would let her die with some hope in her. He owed her that much - he owed both of them that much, her and Apollo. He gave a long, slow sigh and then nodded reluctantly. It was a sham, but he would go along with it. Dying didn't scare him, but letting her down terrified the pants off of him.

'I suggest that we go along with what the Chief has planned. He seems to know what he is doing - and judging by the affects it has had on the Cylons here it was at least partially effective. Captain Apollo has informed me that he may well have charted Earth's position. If we can free ourselves of the Cylons then we can go there.'

He was staring at her incomprehendingly, unable to understand how she, of all people, could suddenly be so gullible. But then he remembered the religious fervor that had overtaken her about the Temple of Athena, the prophesy, the Arrow, all of that religious mumbo jumbo that had totally sucked her in. Her disease had changed her, and even now when she was supposedly cured, she was still indelibly marked by it. He wondered how the prophesy fit now that she wasn't dying anymore. At least he hoped she wasn't dying. He didn't dare believe it. He didn't dare believe anything.

00000

'What are you doing?'

'Looking for a way out.' Kate was halfway up one of the crates piled up in the middle of the room, climbing strongly to the top. She hauled herself up and stood upright, turning to survey the whole space. There wasn't much light and Sawyer couldn't see how the height gave her any advantage over just walking over to the hidden corners of the room and taking a look. Jack was sitting by Juliet, who was leaning against one of the walls pretending to sleep. Sayid had positioned himself close to Locke in a spot where he could see everyone inside the room and still get a good view of the door. At least with Jack next to her Sayid wouldn't give her a hard time, he told himself. The mood among the beach campers was somber. This wasn't the rescue welcome they had all expected. Getting locked up in this dark hole after their sudden evacuation from the Island wasn't how it was supposed to go. They all looked tired and scared. All except Kate, who looked determined and a little crazy. She was off the crate already and over at one corner of the room, pulling herself halfway up that wall. As if this was anything but a square metal box inside a bigger square metal box inside a whole lot of empty space. He watched Kate for a moment and then found himself automatically checking over to where Juliet was still leaning back against the wall, head still tilted back. Jack was sitting too close. He had moved closer so now his arm was touching hers. He wanted to stride up there and push them apart. What had happened to him and Juliet as a couple only minutes ago? What had happened to her acknowledgement of him in front of Hurley and the others? As soon as Jack walked in that all went out the window. Or airlock. Or whatever the hell they had here.

He was jealous. _Fine_. He admitted it. But she was different around Jack. Or was it Sayid? Maybe she was simply scared of Sayid and that was why she stuck close to Jack. Or maybe it was Jack sticking close to her. It was good that Jack was looking out for her - she was safer that way. Surely he loved her enough to see that this was better for her, that she felt more comfortable with Jack there and- Sawyer sighed in frustration. He was like a kid in high school - as if worrying about whether Juliet was still interested in him was the most important thing he had to worry about. _Goddammit_, he had come too close to dying in the last few hours - being shot by Ben's people, thrown into space the moment he arrived here or killed when Red Dress started doing her thing in that prison cell. He should be worrying about whether or not any of them were going to survive the next few hours not obsessing about whether or not Juliet still loved him. But even so, he stole another glance to check on her before he grudgingly went over to Locke and sat next to him. Sayid was watching him carefully. he gave him a conspiratorial nod and shuffled closer.

'I don't like it,' Sayid said softly, his eyes roaming the space. 'They are holding us here and lying about why.'

'That's because you wouldn't believe the truth,' Locke said dryly.

'Which is?'

'Which is that we are on a space ship somewhere in our distant future and they don't know what the hell to do with us.'

Sawyer shifted uneasily. Why couldn't Locke just keep his damn mouth shut? This wasn't helping.

'Plus there seems to be some crisis going on - an attack or something. I think we're the least of their problems right now.'

'An attack?' Sayid asked. 'What do you mean?'

'I heard the guards talking - they're surrounded by Cylons.'

'The Others?'

'No. The Cylons.'

Sayid's eyes narrowed. 'Cylons are the Others.' His eyes flicked menacingly over to Juliet.

'No. The Others are with Ben on the Island,' Locke corrected him. 'The Cylons are something else entirely.'

'This is another hatch,' Sayid said, looking around. 'I think they airlifted us in the helicopter, knocked us out with some poison gas and then took us to another hatch on the Island. We are not on a ship - do you feel any movement? No.'

Locke smiled. 'Didn't you hear the bit about the _space _ship? Space ships don't move with the waves because they are in _space_.' Another patronizing, knowing smile from Locke and Sawyer felt like shouting at him to be quiet. This wasn't helping.

Sayid gave Locke a long, level look. Locke met his gaze and raised his eyebrows questioningly. There was a long silence. Sawyer shook his head in frustration. What did Locke think Sayid was going to believe? What was the hell point in saying anything to do with space ships and time travel? It wasn't going to achieve anything and Sawyer could tell by the silence in the room that everyone just thought Locke was crazy. Sawyer was sick of crazy, sick of all of it. He felt the despair weigh him down like some weight was stuck to his chest. He was tired of this game. Real tired. Sayid was making more sense than Locke - of course this was another hatch, you only had to look at his place to know that. The evidence was right there in front of everyone's eyes. The color of the walls, the shape of the room, even the damn doors looked the same. Of course this was a hatch. Even having a nice big picture window of Picon wouldn't change that. Sawyer had been on that mining crate for _three months_ and it hadn't changed his perception. People see what they expect to see, nothing more, nothing less.

There was the noise of scraping metal and Sawyer around to see the hatch door opening and the pale, solitary figure of Penny stepping uncertainly into the room. Behind her were Helo and Sharon. Helo stood surveying the room before he caught sight of Sawyer and nodded to him, raising his eyebrow as he took in the sight of Kate jumping lightly down from where she had been exploring one of the side walls. Then he turned to Sharon and led her into the room.

Penny took a few paces inside and hugged her arms around herself protectively. She scanned the room, found no one she could attach herself to and stood there, silent and alone. No one else moved. Helo was surveying the place, looking around expertly until he picked a spot over in the corner with the middle crates screening the door. He led Sharon over to it. She looked pale and unsteady and sat gratefully with her back to the corner, resting her head on the back wall with a sigh of relief. Once Sharon was safely in position he turned to Sawyer with a serious expression. 'You OK?'

'No.'

Helo gave a half laugh. 'Juliet?'

Sawyer gestured over to where Jack still sat next to her by the side wall. Jack had his eyes closed as well now. _Sore head_, Sawyer realized. Jack probably had that mother of all brain aches. Waking up that first time had sucked big time.

'She OK?' Sawyer asked, turning his attention back to Helo and gesturing to Sharon.

Helo looked worried and shook his head. 'I don't know. OK, I think. She should be in the hospital, but-' He shrugged. 'It was getting kind of quiet and the marines didn't have enough to do. I figured it was safer for her here. The Doc made up some bull about quarantine and got us moved here.'

'So what's really going on?' Locke had come up beside him, silent as a cat. He made no effort to speak softly, instead making sure his voice carried around the whole of the room. Sawyer could see the rest of the beach survivors watching intently. Penny had moved to one of the side walls farthest away from anyone else and had sat down, knees drawn up to her chin.

'Yeah,' Frogurt piped up, 'What is really going on. You're one of them - you got the uniform.'

Sawyer turned back to see Locke smiling again, his attention on Frogurt for a moment before turning back to Helo. 'It's OK, you can give us the full version. Let me start. We are on a spaceship somewhere in our future and, happily for us, this ship is surrounded by a race called _Cylons _who might or might not be on the verge of attacking us.'

There was a stiff silence from everyone else. No one moved. Sawyer glanced over at Jack. This would have been his show, but he looked like he was still asleep. Kate was leaning by on one of the crates and not moving. Hurley was watching in silence. Even Frogurt was waiting for the anser.

'Well?' Locke prompted.

Helo thought for a moment and then gave a long sigh. 'Yeah, that's about it.'

There was a snort of derision from Frogurt.

'So what's going on?' Locke persisted. 'These Cylons-'

'Have us surrounded,' Helo finished for him.

'And they might attack.'

'I don't know. They seem to be talking.'

'Hold on. Who are you people?' Kate was there now, standing above them on one of the crates, looking down.

'I'm human,' Helo said, 'And Sharon's a Cylon.'

'Cylon,' Locke rolled the words around his mouth. 'So not human?'

Helo hesitated. Sawyer could see him going through possible answers in his mind. 'It's complicated,' he said finally.

'We got time,' Locke smiled again and sat down.

'OK.' Helo took a breath. 'I was born on a planet called Caprica. There were twelve habitable planets and a colony on each of them...'

Sawyer could feel his head about to explode. Why was Helo doing this? It wasn't going to work. There was no way any of them could believe all this. Sawyer watched the faces of the people around him ranging from wary disbelief to confusion and anger. This wasn't going to work. One glance told them that they were in a hatch on the Island and Helo's words were mind games - Helo was an Other and this was one of their famed experiments. Sawyer knew what Helo was saying was true and even he didn't believe it. He looked over at Kate. Her expression was fixed and fierce. When she sensed him watching her she caught his eyes. Yeah. _Trap_. _Hatch_. Experiment. _Cages_. _Guns_. Been there, done that on the little zoo Island. Same old same old. Only it wasn't but no way could he tell it like any of them could believe it. He didn't even believe it himself even though he knew that every word Helo was telling them was true. Crazy crazy. Juliet had the right idea. He should sleep through all of this and wake up the other side.


	109. Tangled Web

Chapter 109

Tangled Web

The ship _looked _the same as Adama strode purposefully toward the CIC. It felt different though - it felt... looser, like his crew were on a day's leave. The edge had gone. It wasn't anything tangible, nothing he could put his finger on; little signs. The marines were more relaxed, the crew he passed in the corridors were alert but not battle-ready, the way they walked, talked, moved had lost that sharp scared jerkiness that went with tension and fear. Had all of them been overcome by Laura's hope and Apollo's hopelessly optimistic version of the facts? They were acting like the Chief really was going to save them all, he really had deactivated the dangerous Cylons and they really were going to Earth. The rumor mill would have been churning out all the news from overheard conversations with Laura in the hospital wing to whatever the Chief had done or said as he left with the Cylon delegation.

And then Saul. Saul, the XO had also gone to the Cylon fleet. The fact that both the XO and the Chief were Cylons probably hadn't made it to the ears of his crew yet - or if it had it would be dismissed as a more fanciful rumor. Everyone loved the Chief, from knuckledraggers to marines. He was – correction, _had been_ - a good soldier, a good leader. No wonder they were all feeling reassured by his exit with the Cylons.

Hope was blossoming on Galactica. Why did that leave him even more afraid?

Laura walked silently beside him. She hadn't said a word since they had left the hospital wing, content to watch and smile and breathe deeply, striding out to match his pace. He felt like he was being smothered in optimism.

He drew in a breath as they neared the CIC, steeling himself, ordering his stomach to settle and his head to clear. The first two paces into the room usually gave him a flavor of what was really going on, the way the eyes of his crew followed him from their stations, the looks of tension or relaxation on their faces. Over the years he had learned to read the imperceptible signs. It was tense in here, he noted with approval. That was good. This wasn't the place of rumors and false optimism. He hoped this was still a place of bare facts. This was always where he had faced the truth, however bad and he hoped to the gods that was a tradition that was continuing.

'Sitrep,' he growled, as stepped closer to automatically assess what was happening on the Dradus screen. He could hear Laura coming in behind him as she came to stand by his side. He could imagine her expression; she had always found this part of the ship fascinating. Probably because this was one place he had firmly excluded her. This had always been his place, the heart of the military with no room for civilians or politicians.

'We had a message from the Chief around a half hour ago telling us to stand by,' Apollo said testily. 'Nothing since then.' His son looked tense and worried, the muscle on his jaw twitching.

Adama grunted. 'Stand by? What the hell does that mean?'

'I guess we wait.'

Adama gave his son a sideways glance.'The XO?' he almost cursed himself then for using Saul's title. Because he wasn't the XO anymore.

'Nothing.'

Adama gave a sigh of frustration.

'Have any more Cylons joined these ones?' Laura cut in, squinting up at the Dradus screen and wrinkling her nose as she tried to make sense of it. 'These blips here -?'

'Are Cylon Base stars. Yes madam President. Two more joined them around a half hour ago.'

She nodded. 'And they've shown no sign of aggression?'

'Not so far.'

'I guess we _do_ wait then.'

Adama gave an irritated grunt, annoyed at her assumption of command. 'Patch us through,' he said curtly, ignoring Laura's look of irritation.

Dee nodded, settled the headphones and concentrated on her display. There was silence as everyone waited. 'I have the XO sir,' she said finally.

'Put him on speaker.'

A crackle and then Saul's voice echoed through the room. 'Bill?' Saul's voice sounded strained.

Adama caught his initial impulse to tell Dee to cut him off, to stop communicating with this... creature. His mouth felt dry as he forced himself to respond. 'Yeah.' was all he could manage.

'We're coming over. We need to talk.' Then there was a click as the line went dead.

Adama tasted the new silence. His own silence now. Defeat, humiliation, confusion. He drew in a deep breath and tried to hold himself a little taller.

'I suppose that wasn't a request,' Laura said dryly. She turned to survey the room with a practiced eye, taking in the expressions of the crew, the stepped work stations, the silence. He had kept the CIC as his hidden sanctum, the one place that he restricted her access to. This was his domain. He hoped she still realized that. 'Where should we meet them?' She asked briskly. She looked altogether better than he felt. He sighed.

'Hanger deck,' he muttered.

'No, too informal. Captain Apollo, have them shown into one of the briefing rooms. We'll meet them there.'

He stared at her for two beats, feeling the anger rising in him. This was the CIC. This was his command and... and she was the President and the Cylons wanted to talk. Saul wasn't his friend- he wasn't the XO, despite what he had said. This was all about politics now. He couldn't win a military victory against the Cylons even if he was fool enough to try and fight them. Laura was right. It was her call.

He could see what she was trying to do - act like they were ambassadors or something or that the humans were hosting a conference. Did she hope it would give the humans more authority? The only snag in that plan was simple.

'They are machines,' he said simply, quietly enough so that no one else could hear. 'You can't reason with them.'

'I know that. But right now, those machines are in a good position to kick our butt. I am going to take any advantage I can. And in the meantime,' she continued, turning to Apollo, 'I would like to see those maps you told me about. Commander, I think you should see this too.' Adama glared at her. He had planned to stay right here in the CIC. This was his place, at the helm of the ship.

'She's right dad,' Apollo echoed, gesturing to to Gaeta to go with them .Adama reluctantly found himself towed along, following them all to one of the pilots' briefing rooms. Once inside Gaeta was brisk efficiency, spreading open oen of the larger star charts. They all stood around the table as Gaeta leaned in to point to a small dot at one corner. Adama squinted down at it. The scale was huge.

'We are here, Madam President,' Gaeta said enthusiastically, 'And Earth,' he leant over and stretched his arm out to point to an area marked out carefully at the other edge of the paper. 'Is somewhere in one of these quadrants here. Here.'

Laura leant over, wrinkling her nose a little. The star chart was on the largest sheet they had. He wondered if she realised just how huge the scale was.

'This here,' she said, gesturing to the blank section between their position and the area that supposedly contained Earth, 'is all uncharted?'

'That's right, Madam President.'

She sniffed slightly. 'And these?' she pointed to more dots placed at random between their position and the sector where Earth was supposed to be.

'They are planets and stars that Daniel Faraday has plotted as markers,' Gaeta explain. They do roughly coincide with the results from colonial probes. He says he has the exact coordinates but-'

'So Earth has already been discovered by a probe?' She interrupted

'No Madam President. A probe has never gone as far as these sectors.'

She grunted with something like interested approval. 'And you can trust this?'

He hesitated, 'I think so. What Daniel Faraday said does concur with what we already know. He filled in some gaps, but the general framework is something we already have which suggests that he might be telling the truth-'

She frowned. 'Where is he now?'

'We've secured him under guard.'

'You could spend lifetimes searching this much space,' Adama said gruffly. He glanced up to see her frowning. 'This isn't enough.'

'He told us that he could be more precise if - when he knew that his people were safe.' Gaeta said, uneasily looking over to Apollo.

'His people?' Laura echoed.

'The refugees from Kobol.' Gaeta cleared his throat uncomfortably.

She nodded. 'So he has the precise coordinates?'

'That is what he tells us, yes.'

Adama snorted. 'Of course he would say that. He could point anywhere on this map. What we have here is nothing.

Laura shrugged, 'I'm prepared to believe anything if it will get us out of here. I'd like to speak to him,' she said, turning to Apollo with a smile. 'In the meantime, gentlemen,' she expanded her smile to include them all, 'I think it is time to go speak to the Cylons.'

Adama felt like a weary bear shuffling along, like he had chains attached to both legs. He was too old for this. Too broken. He was a soldier, not a fracking politician. Laura strode along beside him with determination and fire. Apollo gave him the occasional worried glance but kept his mouth shut. They both seemed in their element. All Adama could think about was whether or not Saul would be there. Would he look guilty or smug? And Ellen? Would she be there as well? He felt sick at the thought. They turned down the corridor to where two marines were standing outside the conference room door.

'Are they here? Sergeant Bates, isn't it?' Laura paused in front of the guard.

Adama knew he should be feeling relief that Laura's star seemed to be on the rise when his was so clearly fizzling as it died, all light gone. He felt gray, like all the life was washed out of him. But in spite of her upbeat enthusiasm he couldn't share her hope. It was another lie and he was done with lies. He stood silently as Laura took in a deep breath, smoothing down her clothes before she nodded to them both with a determined smile, pushed open the hatch door and stepped into the room.

00000

'Twelve planets, twelve colonies. We had machines that did most of our work for us. Intelligent machines. There came a point when our machines decided they didn't want to be our 'slaves' any more and they rebelled. There was a war. When it ended we were more careful about what machines we had and how we used them. The technology you see on this Battlestar has purposefully been kept simple and un-networked. Other Battlestars in the fleet didn't have those precautions. The Cylons hacked into our systems and wiped us out.' Helo paused and Sawyer watched the faces of the people around him. Juliet was still asleep; he could tell by the way her head slumped and how her chest rose and fell with her breathing. Jack was still sitting next to her. His eyes were open and there was a frown creasing his forehead. Sawyer wondered where it had all gone - his reunion with Juliet, Hurley's declaration that they were a couple… Suddenly Juliet had taken up position by Jack's side. One moment she had been there with him, tucked into his arms. He had let her go to do her medical speak. Then what? He remembered turning to talk to Kate and when he turned back to Juliet she hadn't been anywhere near him. .,

'Is he drunk?' Kate whispered from beside him, staring intently at Helo.

Sawyer didn't answer. His mouth felt dry. He ran the scene back in his mind. Jack and Kate had come in. Juliet had talked about Charlie and Kate had come over and then Juliet had moved away and sat down over there.

'Maybe he's crazy,' Kate was saying.

'... Galactica was supposed to be turned into a museum and we were in the middle of the decommissioning ceremony when the Cylons attacked the colonies. I was halfway back to Caprica - me and Boomer were escorting the fighter had newer planes and they were wiped out right away.' Helo paused as if remembering the scene, his voice faltering. 'We were hit and made it down to the planet where we picked up some civilians. I stayed on Caprica- I was going to try and figure out if there was any resistance to the Cylons.'

The silence was more charged now, more of a stunned disbelief. Sawyer could see that this was too much detail, it was too personal and not one of them was going to be able to believe a single word.

'You said that the planet Caprica had been nuked,' Locke broke in, 'wasn't it fried with radiation?'

'Yeah. I had radiation meds.' Helo hesitated and then cleared his throat. 'That's where I met Sharon.' He let his voice trail off, and looked anxiously over to where Sharon was still seated in her corner, watching him steadily. Sawyer suddenly realized that he and Juliet were the next in the story. Was Helo going to talk about the mining crate? He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

Helo took a deep breath deep breath, 'We managed to get off of Caprica and hide out in a mining crate orbiting Picon.' He glanced over at Sawyer. 'That's where I met James and Juliet.'

Sawyer almost groaned. He felt all eyes turn to him with curiosity and disbelief. He didn't say anything, found himself completely blanking out. What the hell was he supposed to do? Say 'Oh yes, I was there and the food was blue?' _Crap_.

'We were there three months, and it took a while for me to figure out what had happened. It looks like there had been some sort of temporal or spatial anomaly-'

Sawyer could feel Kate's eyes boring into him. Sawyer shifted uncomfortably and refused to look at her.

'Is this for real?' she hissed.

He sighed and shook his head.

'He's making it up,' she said more softly.

He didn't answer.

'What does all this mean?' Locke was saying. 'In practical terms?' Sawyer could see that Locke was playing this like some sort of double act, feeding Helo lines and letting him perform his part. It was crude but Helo seemed more than happy to play along. l

'Looks like there was some glitch,' Helo clarified. 'Like a wormhole in space and time - some sort of spatial temporal tunnel that has pulled you all from your time and space here into ours.'

There was a snort of laughter from somewhere in the crowd. It was the older guy, Bernard. 'Now wait a minute. You are telling us that you are from our future and that we have somehow gotten ourselves into a wormhole and traveled through space and time and now we are in a spaceship?'

' 's right.'

Bernard was shaking his head in disbelief.

'Look, I know it's a lot to take in, but you need to understand the situation you're in. It might make the difference between whether or not you all survive the next few hours. Right now the situation is critical. The Cylons have caught up with the civilian fleet and this ship and all the others are surrounded. Also, it looks like the Commander thinks that you are all Cylons and that makes you the enemy.'

There was a stunned silence.

'Are you for real?' Frogurt said. 'You want us to believe all this?'

Helo had left out the bit about Sharon being a Cylon, Sawyer noticed. And Boomer. So far Jack had remained silent. Helo gave a long, tired sigh. 'Look, I don't expect you to believe it all right away. But it would help if you could take some of it on board. There's no going back. You're here now.'

'No going back?' Claire echoed hollowly.

'The EM hole - the wormhole is probably closed. At least that's what Daniel Faraday said.'

'Daniel,' Penny had stood up and was standing right near Helo. 'Where is he?'

Helo shrugged, 'Apollo wanted to talk to him. I think he's being held somewhere on Galactica.'

She nodded and Sawyer could see the despair in her eyes. Did she believe all this? Her expression didn't tell him much. Despair, exhaustion. He couldn't see if she believed all of it or not. She had turned up on the beach with Daniel Faraday, so what was her connection? Sawyer looked around at the blank and confused faces surrounding him. What he had taken as rapt attention was really just incomprehension.. They didn't get it at all. And who could blame them?

There was silence for a moment.

'What a crock of shit,' Frogurt said with a laugh. 'You think that was funny?'

Sawyer glanced over to where Jack was watching Helo intently. Did Jack believe it? Did it matter?

'Three months?' Kate hissed at him. 'Helo said you had spent three months with him,'

Sawyer felt his mouth go even drier.

'Is that true?'

'Yeah.' His voice came out as a croak. 'It's true.'


	110. Awakening

Chapter 110

Awakening

'Get Starbuck,' Adama growled to the nearest marine. The man nodded and hurried away, leaving a tense silence between him, Laura and Apollo.

'Are you sure that's wise-'

'She has good instincts. Doesn't over think it.' He gave Apollo a significant look. 'And we could use another pair of eyes.'

Laura sighed and pursed her lips disapprovingly. Apollo had become her creature, he realized with a shock. Or at least that was how she saw him. _His_ son. He appraised them both, suddenly uncomfortable at the way the two of them stood, slightly apart from him, the distance between them all forming two distinct groups. Him and them. Well, so be it. Starbuck would at least even up the numbers.

'We'll wait for her here,' he said with increasing determination. Laura's disapproval was palpable but she stood and waited. Apollo stood quietly looking everywhere but at him, he looked steadfastly down the corridor where Starbuck would appear. He counted down the seconds. Three minutes of seconds. Pretty good if she had been asleep. She came around the corner at a brisk walk, flanked by the marine who had been sent to fetch her.. He was relieved to see that she looked healthy and well-rested, the color back in her face, her eyes brighter.

'Sir.' She snapped to attention, her eyes focused on his.

Adama nodded with approval and started walking.

'What's going on sir?' she asked breathlessly, glancing over at Apollo and the President but still keeping her attention on him.

'We're going to meet with the Cylons. The President and Apollo,' he waved dismissively at the two walking behind them, 'seem to think they can talk their way out this. I need your eyes.'

She nodded seriously. She looked sharp. That was good.

There was no time for any more of a briefing than that as they approached the meeting room. There were already two marines outside the door, another ten lining the assumed it had been Apollo that had ordered the Cylon escort. Looked like Apollo didn't trust them as much as he made out. Adama took a deep breath and led the small group to the door. He was going to go in first. Not Laura, not Apollo. It was important to show who was in charge, who they had to convince. And that wasn't going to be Laura or Apollo.

The room was set up for a conference or debate. A large table, chairs around the side, enough room for fifteen people to sit comfortably. There were glasses of water in front of each chair. A little detail that he knew Laura had seen to. Not good. It showed too much weakness.

There were a lot of them this time. He counted eight at a glance and then looked more closely at each one. He recognized most of them; Saul, the Chief, Leobin, the blonde Cylon, the brunette, Ellen and two others he didn't know; a man and a woman. The man looked familiar, and, now he came to think of it, so did the woman. Laura gave a gasp from beside him. 'Tori?' she asked. There was something like a sly smile from the woman at the table. 'You're a Cylon?' Laura breathed.

Tori inclined her head, the same cold smile on her lips. Adama saw the chief shifting uncomfortably.

'Who is she?' muttered Adama.

'Presidential staff officer,' she said coldly. Well now she knew a little of what it felt like, Adama reflected ruefully, and she didn't seem to like it either.

There was an awkward silence for a moment before Ellen stood up. At least he assumed it was Ellen. It was a much younger version, more like the Ellen he'd first known. Saul looked ancient in comparison. He blinked a moment as she came towards him, brushing off Saul's automatic restraining hand as she pushed back her chair and made her way around the table.

'Bill!' she said warmly, throwing her arms around him before he could think to step away, 'I'm so glad you're here! Thank _god _this can all be over now. Don't worry, we've got it all under control,' she said with a flirtatious smile.

Adama stood rigid and uncomfortable, the strong, familiar smell of her perfume threatening to choke him. His mind went blank for a moment. Whatever he'd expected wasn't this.

'Ellen!' Saul's voice cracked a little, but it still had the familiar ineffectual whine that he always used with her. Whatever was different about this new Cylon version of Saul and Ellen, that at least hadn't changed.

'Sorry,' Ellen whispered conspiratorially, her face still too close. 'But you just looked like you needed a hug.' She gave his arm a squeeze. 'And I wanted to be sure there were no hard feelings.'

Something inside him finally snapped. 'How dare you,' He growled out the words. 'The deaths of tens of millions of people, the nuking of twelve worlds-'

She pulled away from him with a pout.

There was a cough from the other side of the room. 'Why don't we all just sit down for a moment and I'll introduce everyone,' the Chief stood at the other side of the table. He looked anxiously over at Ellen, his face pale, his expression serious. He was dressed in sloppy jeans and a jumper. Like a shuffling academic, Adama realized. The soldier had gone.

'You already met Leobin,' the Chief gestured to his right where Leobin gave a nod and a small wave, his eyes focused unblinking on Laura for a beat too long before he smiled languidly at Starbuck, stretching back in his chair, his eyes never leaving her face. Adama frowned. Maybe he should have left Starbuck out of this after all. 'Caprica Six,' the Chief continued, nodding to the blonde in the center of the table. Adama recognized it as the same model that had gone crazy in the brig and had had to be shot. 'D'anna,' Brunette next to Leobin. 'Samual Anders - you may know him as the pyramid player,' the Chief paused as if he were waiting for them all to cast their minds back to a more peaceful time. It wasn't his sport so Adama didn't know who the hell they were talking about. Starbuck would know. He turned to her to see her face registering a sort of raged shock. She shook her head in disbelief.

'Well?' he muttered to her 'Is that true?'

She nodded, staring intently at the so called pyramid player. 'That's him,' she said softly.

'Tori,' the Chief was saying, 'Who some of you know from her work with the president.' There was a pause as if he was going to add something to that but then moved on to wave at the two to his left at the edge of the table, 'And of course Saul and Ellen.'

'What happened to Ellen?' Laura asked directly. 'I was told she was dead.' It was a provocative question and Adama was glad that she was going on the attack. Maybe they would salvage some pride out of this fiasco after all.

The chief drew himself up a little taller. 'That's right. Ellen died.' He hesitated and then continued more quickly. 'There are bodies stored in tanks on our resurrection ship. When she died, her consciousness downloaded into one of them. Her body will now age normally until she dies again, and the process is repeated.'

Laura nodded, looking closely at Ellen. 'So you can live for ever?' she asked.

More discomfort from the Chief. 'Provided we have a resurrection ship in range, yes.

'Can your consciousness go into any other body?'

There was a hesitation. 'Not as we have it at the moment, no. We have designed a specific consciousness for a specific body.'

'But you could...'

'Yes. We could.'

She gave a shiver and then straightened.

'Please, sit down,' the Chief gestured to the empty chairs in the front of the room. Laura nodded and took her place opposite him, Apollo to her right. Adama stayed where he was, back straight. He would not sit in front of these machines. Starbuck stayed by his side.

'So from what Captain Apollo told me, there are five of you who made the human-looking models,' Laura said the moment she was seated.

'That's right.'

'And you came from a planet where you say that the machines destroyed your world.'

'Yes.'

'It seems strange then that you helped our Cylon Centurians to perfect the technology which would allow them to make the human models which then went on to destroy our _world_.'

'We offered them the chance to collaborate in exchange for peace.'

'Ah. Peace. Why aren't any of the Centurians here now?'

'Because this isn't their issue. We created this situation and they have agreed that we should clear it up.'

'Clear it up,' she mused more softly. 'Has that happened?'

'I think so, yes. We have... cleaned out the programming problem. The Cylons shouldn't pose a threat to you any more.' The Chief waited for a response and when Laura didn't say anything he continued. 'There are just a few more minor things to clear up.'

'Before what?' Adama interjected.

'Before we leave.' The chief said simply.

Adama looked at him closely, about to say more when Laura leant forward. 'You are going to leave us in peace?'

'That is our intention, yes.'

She took in a long breath as the Chief carried on talking. 'We picked up a group of survivors from Caprica. They'll arrive soon. Sam,' he pointed over to the fair-haired man next to him, 'was working with them. He would like to make sure that they arrive safely. They're human,' he added meaningfully.

Adama frowned. There was more going on here than he realized.

'And Saul and Ellen would like to go with you.'

There was a moment when Adama hadn't heard the words. He looked up sharply.

'It seems I'm not welcome with the Cylons anymore,' Ellen said with a snort of disgust.

Adama ignored her, his eyes on Saul. Saul was sitting stiffly looking directly at him. Adama let his eyes drift to the others. The one they called Sam didn't look comfortable, his eyes darting around the room suspiciously.

'If Sam was there when you picked up the humans from Caprica, where are they?'

'Sam died when we beamed the virus,' The Chief explained. 'His consciousness downloaded onto one of our resurrection ships.'

Laura nodded understanding. 'He was a spy then.'

The Chief shook his head, 'No, he was a member of the resistance. He had no idea he was a Cylon. None of us did. All of us were working _against _the Cylons. We weren't spies.' The chief sighed. 'Look, one of the human models went... rogue. This wasn't our idea and believe me, we would have stopped it if we had known. But it happened and now all we can do is try and make sure it doesn't happen again.'

No one spoke for a moment. Adama felt sick. He was sick of the trite excuses, sick of looking at this man. At all of them. There was a knock on the door behind him and he turned stiffly to see one of the guards holding the door open. Behind him Adama could just see Baltar's face. 'The Vice president says it's important,' the guard said awkwardly. Adama got up immediately. 'Excuse us,' he said. He could see Laura, Apollo and Starbuck getting up as well.

'Bill,' it was Saul's voice. He ignored him and left the room.

00000

She was drowning. No, she had drowned. Panic, pain, her lungs burning as she reached up to the surface. She could feel hands on her, pressure around her arms and under her neck dragging her up, up to the surface where finally with a wrenching stab of agony she took in a breath. It was a sharp, searing pain that stabbed right through her. Like some tortured criminal dunked in water and then pulled out at the last minute, her breathing, retching body was pulled out into the air. She tipped her head to one side and vomited, twisting onto her hands and knees.

'You're OK, it's OK,' she heard one of the voices say. As she tuned into them she could hear them cooing reassuring words, phrasing repeated over and over, 'That's it, you're doing great, it's OK. It's OK.'

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the sticky feeling of whatever gloop she had been drowning in. It was in her mouth, all over her face, its sticky cloying warmth still threatening to suffocate her. Someone cleared it away from her nose and she retched again, feeling the taste of it in her mouth. She kept her eyes tight shut, but even behind her closed eyelids she could see that this place was brightly lit. Too brightly lit. She had been on Galactica, in sick bay. She was sick. The Chief, the Chief was - she felt panic, pain, tried to touch the side of her face where she knew the wound was but hands were still holding her arms and she felt weak, too weak. Her limbs were jelly. She was being hauled up and helped to her feet, but couldn't hold her weight so she collapsed down. Her body felt... odd. Different. Her lungs hurt with every breath and everything ached. She coughed and wretched again, more of the gloop finding its way out of her body, the effort of it making her eyes open enough to see a bright, clean-looking floor. She squeezed her eyes shut again, the sticky substance plastering onto her eyelids and sticking them together. She forced her eyes open. In front of her a face pushed itself into her field of vision.

'Hi! Welcome back!' the face, of course, was her own. She shut her eyes again with a groan of pain. No dream. This was real. She knew if she looked again she would see more of the same face, more of her. She recognized the voices now. They were all _her _voice, _her _face, _her _body. Her sisters. Welcoming her home.

She had died.

She was dead.

She pulled one hand away enough to touch her cheek. The wound had gone. Another moment of panic. This wasn't her body, this wasn't her life. She struggled against the arms holding her but they held her more firmly, the voices cooing calm reassurance.

'We'll wash you,' one voice said, 'and then if you want to you can sleep again.' 'Sometimes it's good to sleep,' another added. 'And eat.'

'Maker Galen said you might feel a little disoriented.' The first one said, 'As your memory returns. He came to see us personally,' a ripple of soft, approving laughter.

She felt her stomach heaving again. This body felt... different. Whole, yes, but unfamiliar. Not her.

They guided her to a shower where she stood under tepid water feeling naked and exposed while they stood around staring at her. They looked alien to her now, unnatural, like false dolls churned out on a factory line. Not her. She stood under the spray of water with her eyes shut, trying to ignore the unwanted helpful hands that were now soaping and washing her hair, her face, her eyes, gentle and insistent. She felt totally and utterly invaded. Alien invasion.

'Maker Galen has gone over to the human ship,' one was saying, 'but he told us to take special care of you.'

Something permeated her mind then. _Maker Galen_. 'The Chief?' she whispered in a voice that wasn't hers any more. This one wasn't roughened by drink and late nights and... life.

'_The Chief. _Yes, they called him that. The humans,' the Eight next to her clarified with a disapproving frown.

_Maker Galen._ She frowned because that was familiar as well. She had called him that before as well. Some time in a past whose memory was too hazy to recall fully. When had he been anything other than The Chief to her? Maker Galen. No. It didn't sound right. They led her out of the running water and rubbed her dry with soft cloths. She could feel her memory expanding and her limbs getting stronger. She could walk now, run, jump. This body was strong, her mind was strong. She knew that if she stretched it, her memory would be there. She knew without having to think about it that during an upload she would be updated and her mind would be updated. Like some insect hive she would share whatever information or programming changes were felt necessary by the Makers. Especially Maker Galen. Her _creator_. Not lover, not equal. She was the machine and he was... she sought for the answer to that. He was more. And he was married. And however much any of the Eights felt a strong attraction to Maker Galen, all of them know that Maker Tori was vicious enough to box them all and make sure that none of them ever resurrected again if they dared to cross the line between creation and creator.

She took a stumbling step and was immediately supported by coos of warning not to do too much too soon. They were right, of course, but she wanted to get away. She could feel the buzz of excitement in the other Eights. All of them, she realized, had probably shared in her download. All of them were no doubt privy to the most private moments she had shared with the Chief. With her maker. She stood, wretched and miserable as the others dried her and dressed her, combed her hair and then led her to a chamber. She lay down on the bed and turned her face to the wall. Then she lay there trying not to think, determinedly withdrawing from the part of her mind that _knew _things, but like an aching tooth she kept going back to it, probing it, suddenly thirsty for information about what had happened and who she really was.

The results didn't please her; after several minutes she had to face the fact that she was little more than a thing. She was a fabricated machine made by the man she thought she had loved. She had nothing left. Not even the privacy of her own memories. It was all gone, all taken from her. Even her wound had been taken from her. Suddenly she wanted it back, she wanted the ugliness of the gunshot wound - anything that would make her different from hundreds of others who were just like her. She was nothing now.


	111. DNA

Chapter 111

DNA

Adama could see Gaius Baltar gesturing to them from behind the guard's back. Adama leant over and gestured to the President. 'I think we need to hear what the Vice President has to say,' he said quietly, pointing to the face of Gaius Baltar just visible behind the bulk of the guard. She frowned in annoyance. 'It might be important,' he added tersely.

'And this isn't?' She hissed back at him. She looked over to the door, to the face of Gaius Baltar still dwarfed by the bulk of the guard next to him and then reluctantly nodded, rising from her chair in a smooth movement and giving her apologies to the Cylons in front of her with a tight-lipped political smile. She was giving these machines too much respect, he decided. They weren't human. They were _things_, nothing more. Toasters. Had she forgotten that? He glanced over at the Cylons still ranged in the chairs in front of them - purposefully not focusing on Saul, Ellen and Chief Tyrol. If he bothered to examine his feelings he knew he wouldn't be able to square the circle. They didn't look or breathe like machines. They didn't bleed like machines. They mimicked human emotion perfectly. It was worse than if they had been the shiny chrome toasters. Far worse.

He stood abruptly, scraping his chair through the last of Laura's words. Something about excusing them for a moment and they would be right back blah blah blah. The meeting was already over as far as Adama was concerned. He had nothing to say anyway. He hadn't even been listening - well, not much. Apollo and the President had been discussing how to hand over the people the Cylons had picked up from Caprica. Did they seriously expect it to happen? All of this seemed too neat, too easy, too damn convenient. He did not believe for a moment that they were off the hook and that the Cylons were really going to hand over whoever was left on their home worlds and then meekly let them go.

He didn't bother even acknowledging the Cylon 'delegation' as he rose stiffly from his chair and followed Apollo and Laura to the door. Starbuck was the only one who respectfully hung back and waited for him to go through the door first. He glanced at Laura and Apollo's backs disappearing into the dimmer light of the corridor. He was losing command of this situation and it didn't feel good.

He took two steps away from the hatch door and stood waiting for Starbuck to close the hatch door behind her. When the meeting room door closed behind them they huddled around the Vice President, the small group filling the corridor. Baltar was wearing his lab coat and strutting like a Bantam cockerel.

'Well?' Laura turned expectantly to him, making no effort to hide her irritation at being called out of the meeting.

'I've completed the DNA tests of the people from Kobol,' he said excitedly, 'I took samples from all of them - including Helo and the Cylon Sharon. And guess what?'

Adama sighed.

'So,' Baltar continued, 'it looks like they are all direct descendants from Helo and Sharon.' He stopped speaking and waited for their reaction.

There wasn't one. Both Apollo and Laura were silent. Then Apollo spoke. 'So they are Cylons?'

'Yes.'

'Then they're lying,' Laura said simply.

Adama let that sink in. Of course he'd known that this was an elaborate game - a way of dragging out their demise for the Cylons' amusement. 'So those people on Kobol, saying they were from Earth, it was all a hoax.'

'Yes. But it doesn't change anything. We keep talking,' she said firmly, nodding to the hatch door and the Cylon delegation inside.

'What about the people we picked up from the beach?' Apollo asked, an edge to his voice.

'They're not people,' Starbuck pointed out. 'They're machines.'

'We get them off our ship,' Adama said firmly, turning to Starbuck. 'See to it that Helo and his Cylon... offspring... are returned to the Cylons.'

'Helo?' She asked uncertainty.

'They have his DNA,' he clarified, glancing over to Baltar. 'He chose his side, Starbuck. He has made his allegiance quite clear.'

She sucked in a breath and then nodded.

'Alright,' Laura said stiffly, already pushing open the meeting room door, 'Let's do this.' Adama felt a moment of irritation as Baltar stepped easily in front of him to follow Laura inside. Adama didn't want him there as part of this meeting, but he was the Vice President and there was nothing he could do about it. He saw Baltar pause as he stepped inside, coming up with a short sharp intake of breath. Adama looked to where Baltar was staring at the tall blonde Cylon. Both had an expression of surprise and shock on their faces. Then Baltar composed himself with a visible effort and took his seat.

Adama walked wearily after them.

00000

'I thought you said they would bring us food,' Frogurt complained.

Sawyer shook his head in disbelief. They had just sat through Helo's account of how they were on a freaking spaceship and all Frogurt seemed to have taken from it was that his food delivery was late. Kate was standing in shock, speechless, so at least she got it. That was a good sign. Jack was frowning and looking constipated. The others were just standing around waiting, it seemed, for Jack's constipation to produce something that they could all cling onto. Sawyer gave a half smile at that image. He scanned the rest of the storage area. Juliet was asleep, her head resting back against the far wall. That was good, he thought. Penny was sitting near her at the back of the room, hunkered down with her hands around her knees. She didn't look shocked or surprised, just tired. Where did she fit in with all of this? She had arrived with Daniel Faraday - the one person who seemed to have a good grasp of what was going on. So far she hadn't said much and no one had paid her much attention, including himself. But now they were trapped inside a small space with an uncertain future and maybe it was time to find out exactly what her part was in all of this. For all he knew their survival might depend on it. Unlikely, but possible.

He nonchalantly moved over to where she was sitting and sat down next to her.

'Hey,' he said quietly, turning his head so that he could see her face.

She didn't look at him at first. He realized with a start that she was crying. He gave her a moment to compose her features, watching her carefully. She looked a mess, sad, disheveled, her eyes red-rimmed and blotchy. 'You didn't like Helo's story then?' he asked.

She shook her head, taking a deep breath before she turned to face him. 'There's no going back,' she said simply.

He felt the shock of her directness, hesitating for a moment before he answered her. 'Doesn't look like it,' he agreed.

'Where's Daniel?' she asked suddenly, scanning the room as if he were hiding somewhere behind one of the containers.

Sawyer shrugged. 'With Apollo, someone said.'

'He's the only one who can get us out of here,' she said, a hint of desperation creeping into her voice now.

'I recall him saying it was too late.' He was watching her more carefully now. He could see his hunch about her at been right; she did know a lot more about this.

'The wormhole is closing,' she stared into the middle-distance as she said the words, her voice barely a whisper.

'Wormhole,' he echoed musingly. 'What do you know about that?'

She hesitated, about to say something and then shook her head. 'I'm no physicist,' she said wearily. 'I don't understand it all. You need to ask Daniel.'

'How do you know him?' He felt the suspicion creep into his voice. She didn't seem to notice it, as she sighed and took a long breath.

'He's my brother,' she said softly. 'Only he doesn't remember. Half-brother,' she corrected. 'We share the same father.'

'You have a British accent,' he pointed out.

'London.' She half smiled. 'Daniel was brought up in the States.'

'And you think Daniel knows-'

'Yes. Daniel knows.' she nodded definitively.

Sawyer chewed his lip a moment. 'How did you get to the Island?'

'On a boat.'

'Why?'

'The Island has healing properties. Daniel's mother thought that- well, that it would help him.'

'What was wrong with him?'

She looked sharply at him. 'I don't know.'

'Healing properties?' he snorted. 'I got shot on the Island. Hurt like a bitch. There ain't no 'healing properties.''

She shrugged. 'His mind had gone. _He _had gone. Now he's back. It worked.'

Sawyer didn't like the direction this was headed. He glanced up at her suspiciously. 'You know anything about a bunch of marines showing up and killing people?'

The guilty look in her eyes told it all. 'They weren't with us,' she said hesitatingly.

'But you know about them,' he persisted.

'No.'

She knew more than she was letting on. A lot more. Not that it really mattered now. They were here and the Island was a long ways off. He looked around the room at the others. Hurley was standing next to Claire staring into space, a dreamy thoughtful look on his face. Sawyer guessed he was thinking back to all the conversations he'd had with Racetrack. Just like Sawyer had at first. Helo was watching them all carefully with a measured, even stare. Sawyer had to hand it to him- he had presented the information simply and carefully, with enough personal information to allow them all to have a hook to hang their belief on, and enough of the new crazy spaceship stuff to send them all into mind-numbing disbelief, yo-yo-ing between the two by the look of them. Kate caught eye and smiled hesitatingly, walking quickly over to him. She avoided looking at Helo, stepping delicately around the six foot circle of space around him. She crouched down next to him, ignoring Penny. Penny seemed to have this ability to merge into the background and become almost invisible. He would have to watch her more closely, he realized. That sort of ability was dangerous.

'You believe him?' Kate whispered, drawing his attention with a frown aimed at Helo. Helo was standing alone in the middle of the room, quietly talking to Locke. Sayid was right there next to him, listening carefully to whatever it was the two men were discussing. As always Sayid was an unknown. How was he reacting to all of this? Was he going to go crazy Iraqi torturer or reasonable soldier? Could go either way, he mused.

'Well?' Kate prompted. 'What the hell was that all about?'

Sawyer sighed and looked down. What now? Should he come clean and tell her the truth - or his version of it anyway? Should he pretend he was as shocked as she was? Maybe he hould he be more like Jack and stand there looking like he was passing something unpleasant? Maybe not. 'You heard what said,' his voice was dry. 'I reckon he was telling it how he sees it.'

She gave a dry laugh. 'Seriously?'

He didn't answer. They should bring them some water or they'd all get dehydrated and then his head would start hurting.

Kate paused, the intensity in her like a coiled spring. 'Tell me you're not saying you believe any of that?'

He shrugged and looked down. No amount of tales of blue color-changing food or rats the size of horses or Picon squatting in the sky was going to make her believe what Helo had just told her. But it was the truth and her suvival - all of their survival might depend on them believing it. 'I guess I do,' he said quietly. 'Believe it,' he added, in case there was any doubt.

'And the time travel?' Her voice was tight and he could feel her eyes boring into him.

He set his jaw. 'I don't know.' he said, almost honestly. 'Maybe. I'm not saying I like it,' he added quickly, 'But I don't have a good reason not to believe him.'

He looked at her then, meeting her eyes as honestly as he could. She searched his face a moment, the disbelief and confusion writ large on her face. This wasn't what she had wanted to hear. She broke his gaze and glanced over at Jack. Yeah, maybe she'd get more disbelief from him.

A pause. A deep breath while she collected her thoughts. He felt her pulling back, making more distance between them. 'So what now?' she asked.

He shrugged again. 'We hope Frogurt's right and they bring us some food.' The words were barely out of his mouth when there was the scrape of metal and a loud thud as the hatch door was thrown open. Sawyer turned in alarm and stood up, marking Juliet's position and stepping forward, trying to angle himself so that he was between the triangle of Juliet, Penny and Kate and still blocking whoever it was who was trying to smash down the door. From the corner of his eye he saw Sayid and Locke doing the same. Two steps forward.

It was Starbuck. In a rage. Sawyer edged further between the door and where Juliet was still sitting by the wall. He would have been surprised if she was still asleep what with the noise and all, but he wasn't going to take his eyes off Starbuck to turn around and check. Starbuck was fully armed and flanked by at least six guards. They fanned out around the edges of the room and Sawyer could see several more crowding the doorway. He felt a cold clench of fear grab his stomach and squeeze, filling his mouth with nausea. He watched in rising panic as Starbuck strode toward Helo. He stood, jaw clenching, angling himself between Sharon and the intruder. 'You lying bastard,' she spat through clenched teeth. Then she took another step forward and hit him hard. He staggered, holding the side of his face, making a quick hand gesture to Sharon to stay where she was, crouched and looking like she was ready to spring at Starbuck and rip her head from her shoulders.

Helo rubbed his jaw. 'You feel better now?' he asked, the steel in his voice clearly audible underneath the mild response.

'No. What the hell happened to you?' She looked over at Sharon with a bitter twist to her mouth. 'Oh right. _That_ happened to you,' she said with a snarl. 'Well, you'll be pleased to know that we're sending all these Cylons back to their little friends, so whatever it was you had planned isn't going to work.'

Helo's eyes opened in surprise. 'These people are human, Starbuck, They're not Cylons.'

She scoffed. 'You think we're that dumb? We did a DNA test - all of them have your DNA. And your little Cylon girlfriend's,' she gestured disgustedly at Sharon. 'Direct descendants. How about that?'

Helo was staring at her now, shaking his head in disbelief. 'I don't think-,' he began.

'Oh don't do this, Helo. I liked you, I really did-' She shook her head, then straightened up. 'I've called up your little friends and told them to take you all back to the Cylon motherfrakking ship.' She turned and gestured to the guards at the door. 'Take them to the hanger deck,' she said stiffly. Helo stood rooted to the spot for a moment, still frowning. 'What about the injured?' he asked suddenly, 'The man you shot.'

She gave a short laugh. 'I guess you could finish him off, he'll _resurrect_ bright as new.' She turned before Helo could say any more and strode toward the hatch, not looking to right or left. Everyone shifted back as she passed by, careful not to catch her eye. Sawyer knew what they were all thinking. Starbuck had that same crazy look she'd had when she put that bullet through Charlie's guts. There was a slow second when everyone stood frozen. Sawyer looked over to where Helo was still staring after Starbuck, a bruise slowly starting to swell on the side of his face, his lip split and the blood shining in the dim light. Sharon had scrambled up awkwardly and was standing beside him. They all waited in silence as the guards quietly moved to circle the room.

'Get in the center of the room!' One of the gaurds shouted. Sawyer looked around nervously as Kate and Penny drew up beside him. The guards were moving around the perimeter of the room, rifles raised. Sawyer waited for Penny and Kate, checking over to see Juliet getting up from her place by the far wall. He checked himself from going over to her, eyeing the guard approaching them and then taking a few small steps into the center of the room.

Helo was there with Sharon, watching the guards warily. He opened his mouth to say something and then licked his lips anxiously and closed it again. He looked scared. And if Helo was scared...

'Well, I guess that explains the language thing,' Sharon said quietly.

'Huh?' Helo turned to her questioningly.

'If they're our descendants then they'll have the language chip embedded somewhere. The makers put in as a standard dominant gene. It defaults to English once it recognizes the pattern.' Sharon was talking softly, her eyes tracking the guards. She had that look, the one he'd seen right before she threw him across the room on the mining crate. 'If anyone starts speaking English they'll switch?' she carried on conversationally, her tone at odds with her expression. It was so that we would always understand each other. Sort of like a translation device. It was supposed to foster harmony.'

Helo stared at her. 'You think they really are Cylons?'

Sharon gave a half smile. 'It does explain their use of English.'

Helo looked uncomfortably around, shaking his head uncomprehendingly. 'If they are our descendents then these people are from the future, not the past. How the hell is that even possible?'

Sawyer frowned, not sure what he was hearing. What the hell were they talking about? The _future_? Language chips, direct descendants? He felt the familiar free fall of his head about to explode. Just when he'd gotten some sort of handle on the crazy a whole new room of crazy just opened up. Right there inside his mind. Future? Direct descendents? He jumped as one of the guards jabbed his weapon in Sawyer's direction and repeated the order for them to all move to the center of the room.

'What's going on?' Juliet asked breathlessly, suddenly by his side. He glanced over at her and then at the door.

The _future_?

He tried to clear his mind. 'How much did you sleep through?'

'Starbuck came in and hit Helo,' she said, the fear making her voice tremble. 'That kind of grabbed my attention.'

Sawyer took a step forward, wiping his hands down the front of his jeans. 'Looks like we're going on a little trip to see the crazy girl in the bath tub.'

'What do you mean?' Kate asked him from his other side. He'd forgotten about her. His mouth felt dry and his head hurt and all this was happening too fast and he had no idea who were the bad guys, the good guys, what was safe, what wasn't. 'What girl, what bath tub?' Kate was frowning at him like he was crazy, but she was scared too.

'The Cylon ship,' he clarified, half turning toward her. He could see Jack watching them, uncharacteristically silent. Maybe he figured that Helo had taken over as Tarzan, maybe his head still hurt. He didn't look right, he had that about to vomit expression. Sawyer felt a moment's sympathy, thinking back to his first time, Juliet throwing up, their first meeting with Helo and Boomer and-

'Um. Dude?' Hurley was shuffling uncertainly into the center of the room. 'What is going on? I mean, for real?'

Sawyer clapped him on the shoulder, 'Just pretend this is Star Wars, OK? Be Jedi.' Hurley didn't react, but Sawyer started walking toward the guards at the door with a bravado he didn't feel. This was about to get ugly fast. He could feel the tension coming off of the marines and he didn't want a repeat of what had happened to Red Dress in those cells. He raised his hands high so that the guards could see them and kept his steps slow and even. Helo gave him a nod of approval as he walked by - was that for putting his hands in the air or the stupid joke about the Jedi? Helo probably didn't even know about Star Wars.

Hurley moved up next to him, arms raised as well, 'And Charlie?' he asked, voice trembling, 'Are they going to kill him?'

Sawyer paused, remembering Starbuck's talk of resurrection. 'I don't know,' he spared one desperate glance at Juliet before he carried on walking. They were all confused and scared, with no way to understand what was happening. If he went first maybe he could make this easier, crack a couple of jokes, take the edge off it with humor or something. Ha freaking ha.

He made it to the hatch door with Hurley by his side and the others following all. All of them had their hands raised above their heads. Then they were being herded down to the hanger deck through twists of identical-looking corridors, the guards at the front and rear and the ship looking like one enormous hatch on the Island. At least that was familiar. They were all aware that they were in real danger now, all looking warily around. That was good. Even Frogurt kept his comments to muttered complaints about the lack of food and water.

It really didn't look like a space ship, which helped, Sawyer guessed. They could be anywhere - in a hatch on the Island, or on one of those big military ships that housed thousands of personnel.

The hanger deck was strangely quiet - not like the last time they'd been here, unloading the helicopter planes and getting the unconscious islanders to the ship's hospital. Now there was barely anyone. The guards, sure, and what he assumed were the deck-hands. And a single plane - a big one that looked like some sort of transport plane, big enough for all of them. There were two gurneys, one with Charlie- complete with drip and white hospital sheets flanked by a couple of nurses- and one with Desmond. Penny immediately peeled off from the group with a cry. Sawyer turned in surprise. She'd been so passive and silent in their march down to the hanger deck. Now she suddenly came alive, rushing to the gurney and sobbing as she clutched the injured man's good arm.

'Penny?' Desmond croaked, staring at her and then taking in their surroundings as if he thought they had changed in the split second between lying there alone and her arrival. 'What-?'

'I came looking for you!' she said fiercely, 'With Daniel.'

He shook his head disbelievingly, looking at her intently as if he expected her to disappear any moment. 'You know where we are?'

'On the space ship,' she said quickly, without any hesitation or shock or surprise.

'And Daniel?'

She looked around desperately and Sawyer followed her search, his gaze resting on Charlie for a moment, noting how Juliet was right next to Jack again, both leaning over Charlie's gurney. He let his gaze linger there only for a moment before he scanned the group, searching for Daniel as well. He finally saw him standing awkwardly at the edge of the group, looking thoroughly wretched. Sawyer watched him for a moment and then picked out Helo and Sharon. They were standing at the front of the group, stopped by the guards from going near the plane. It was still powering down or whatever it is these planes were supposed to do. There was a crane-thing being pulled away and he watched as the hanger crew finally stepped back from it. This plane was a kind he hadn't seen before - wide bellied and snub nosed. Not a fighter, this must be some sort of a transport. The hatch door opened and a ramp was lowered. Before it even hit the ground, Helo and Sharon quickly stepped up inside and disappeared. Sawyer hesitated, gave Juliet's arm a quick squeeze, 'C'mon,' he said, pulling her behind him and climbing the ramp in two easy strides.

It was dark inside, and it stank of wet earth. He'd been right about it being a transport plane. Looked like it had been used to shift dirt or food or something. It wasn't that it smelled bad, just, well, earthy. It took his eyes a moment to get used to the light and he scanned the inside of the plane, his eyes quickly finding Helo and Sharon up near a far door that must lead to the cockpit. Helo was turned back, looking at them. He nodded once and shifted his stance so that Sawyer and Juliet could join them. The pilot was talking earnestly to Sharon. Well, it looked like Sharon was talking to Sharon as both of them looked identical. Sawyer looked for the tell-tale bandage that would show him this was Boomer, but this woman was completely free of any blemishes.

'I'll stay and you take the plane,' the Sharon look-alike was saying.

Real Sharon pursed her lips, thinking, then turned quickly to Helo, 'Do you really think he knows the way to Earth?'

Helo shrugged, 'I don't see why not.'

'They want you back,' Sharon-lookalike was saying quietly, 'They think it's a great victory that you're pregnant.' Not-Sharon paused and gave a grimace of distaste. 'I don't trust them, there's something not right - even with the re-set that The Chief did on them I'm still not so sure that they are going to go along with it.'

'Come with us?' Sharon was asking.

Not-Sharon shook her head, 'Whatever he is, I- ' she stopped and then shook her head. 'I can't leave him.'

'He's married. And a Maker,' Sharon pointed out.

'He hates her.'

'So?'

Not-Sharon shrugged. 'Maybe I can stay here on Galactica-'

Sharon laughed bitterly, 'You think so?'

'We need to get moving,' Helo said softly, touching Not-Sharon on the arm in a gesture of gentle affection. 'Good luck, Boomer.'

Sawyer felt Juliet's ripple of alarm and he squeezed her arm a little tighter. This Sharon clone was Boomer? He looked more closely at her. No scar, no cut, no nothing. Had they done another time shift again? Not-Sharon, Boomer or whoever she was strode quickly past them. She was in Galactica army fatigues, and she moved with the economy of movement of a trained soldier. Sharon turned to watch her go. 'She'll cover for us,' she said to both of them, 'She'll tell the Cylons that I'm still on Galactica and that the humans are going somewhere else. Once we've jumped away we should be able to lose any chance of them tracking us.

'Is the ship clean?' Helo asked uncertainly.

'Boomer says so. She chose the oldest bucket that still had FTL, and she said she checked it thoroughly.'

'So that was really Boomer?' Sawyer asked uncertainly.

'Yes.'

'I still don't get how you can tell,' Helo said with a smile, already moving toward the hatch door.

'Um, have we time shifted or-' Sawyer felt dumb even saying it. Thankfully neither Sharon nor Helo looked at him like he'd said anything crazy.

'No. She resurrected. She died and then got herself a new body.'

'Oh.' Sawyer said as if it had been so obvious why hadn't he gotten that the first time? 'OK.'

'Right, let's get moving.' Helo leaned out of the hatch door, 'C'mon, let's go folks!'

As he stepped back inside Sharon grabbed his arm. 'Are sure about this?' She asked intently, 'There's no going back.'

'I'm sure. Are you?'

She nodded, 'I think our baby has a better chance this way.' She smiled over toward Juliet and Sawyer felt her straighten a little. She was shaking, he could feel the faint tremble as he held her arm.

'I hope you're right.' Helo patted Juliet on the shoulder and stepped back as the remnants from Oceanic Flight 815 shuffled onto the plane. Helo waited until he found Daniel and then led him quietly toward the door leading to the cockpit. All most of them were going to see was the inside of this plane, Sawyer realized, nothing more. No window onto space, no hyperlight jumps, only the inside of this cargo plane. Helo could have saved his spaceman speech after all.


	112. Guilt

Chapter 112

Guilt

'So we give you back the twelve colonies and we'll move to Kobol,' The Chief said, looking steadily at Laura Roslin. Adama stifled a yawn. This one again. This must have been the third time The Chief had made this suggestion. Adama wriggled in his seat, stiffling the urge to get up and make the godsdamned decision himself. He knew what he would do; Deactivate every fracking Cylon and then – what? What to do with Saul, Ellen and The Chief? Airlock them? He shied away from that thought, the image of them floating away in space. It didn't bring him anything but a feeling of disgust and – and more that he wasn't prepared to look at now. Or ever. It was irrelevant anyway, it wasn't in his power to decide. All he could do was sit here and not look too bored. Laura was right. This slow snail pace of negotiations was their only hope. If it was even that. He had to hand it to her though, she was negotiating as if they had as much power and authority as the Cylons – which to some extent, Adama had realized, they did. _Guilt_. That was their bargaining chip. And Laura was playing on it for all she was worth.

'You are proposing to give us twelve contaminated planets?' Laura said with just the right amount of disbelief and derision.

'We'll help clean them up-'

She snorted and shook her head. 'I think we've had enough of your 'help'. No contact. At all.'

'OK, then we'll take the colonies and you can have Kobol.'

'And how do we know that you'll leave us alone?'

The Chief hesitated. 'I propose we stay in contact this time - have embassies, make sure that the peace is real.'

A long pause while the President considered. 'And what about the Centurions, you say they were partially deactivated - where is their representative?'

'They have... _authorized_ this discussion. We'll report back and see what they say. This isn't their thing.' The Chief smiled, trying - and failing - to cover the obvious hole in his negotiating position. Laura gave a hollow echo of a smile back indicating that she understood and she didn't buy it for one moment.. 'They were talking about leaving this sector altogether,' The Chief added, his eyes shifting anxiously to Saul before trying and failing to meet Laura's eyes. The man was a lousy liar. Always had been, Adama reflected. That was why he had trusted him.

'Where are the Centurions going?' One of the Cylons asked, the ginger haired one. Adama had forgotten her name.

The Chief shifted uncomfortably. 'They haven't decided yet.'

'I think you should just deactivate their thinking chip. Like we did,' Leobin added, staring challengingly at the Chief.

'I think the Centurions have a right to decide,' the tall Blonde looked earnestly over at The Chief, then at Gaius Baltar, 'We have no right to take that from them.'

The Chief shook his head. 'It isn't your decision. Of course we will discuss it with all the human models, but the Centurions' level of consciousness is maker business.'

'Well it shouldn't be,' the Ginger haired one pouted.

'Yes. It should. And whether you believe it is or not, it is a private matter between us and not part of these discussions.'

'I think what happens to the Centurions is very much part of this discussion.' Ellen smiled, giving the room her open, wide eyed stare that was supposed to bring everyone onboard to her way of thinking. Adama had seen that look too many times before. 'What the Centurions decide and whether or not they are rational while they are doing it is surely very relevant this this whole discussion.'

'No,' Samuel Anders spoke up, his voice carrying across the room. 'Galen is right. This isn't on the table. The Centurions are our responsiblitly and we will deal with it. What happens to the Centurions isn't part of this discussion.'

Ellen opened her mouth to protest but Saul's hand on her arm made her pause and turn to him in irritation. He patted her arm calmingly and said something softly to her. She hissed back, pulling her arm out from under his touch and sitting back in her chair with a sulking glare.

Adama shook his head and took a deep slow breath. He glanced over to where Laura was eyeing The Chief sourly. This had been going on a while, round and round. A few productive sentences going in the wrong direction invariably followed by some ridiculous statement by Ellen or one of the other Cylons that sent the whole process back to the beginning again. It had been comforting to see that the Cylons - apart from The Chief, the one called Samuel Anders and a completely silent Saul - didn't agree with any of it. The Chief, backed up by Anders - who, Adama had to admit, came across as reasoned and intelligent - had to explain everything at least three times. It was like he was talking to a bunch of children, patiently going over it over and over again. They were exactly like children, unable to see the ramifications of what they were doing, and The Chief treated them just like that, his explanations including projected outcomes of various positions and the consequences of the decisions that got them there. They listened to him with varying degrees of respect and derision.

Laura must have realized this someway into the first ten minutes and had shown phenomenal patience and restraint in waiting for The Chief to play catch up with his Cylon brood. Saul had remained silent throughout the whole discussion, his only contribution an occasional touch to Ellen's arm to try to silence her. Most of the time his attempts were completely ineffectual. The dynamic between them was identical to the way it had always been; Cylon or human, the couple were as dysfunctional as ever, with Saul hopelessly besotted and Ellen competing with everyone in the room for the prize of being the most immature.

Adama sighted in silent despair and huddled down further into his chair. This was boring as all hell.

Laura took a sip of her water and smiled over at the Cylons ranged in front of her. 'OK, here's the deal - you take a planet of _our_ choice of the twelve colonies and you live there. Then you clean the rest of them up. Meantime we live on Kobol and when or if we want to move back to our home planets we can.'

Leobin was already shaking his head at that and leant over to whisper something to The Chief. Even if Leobin didn't like it, then for once Adama had to agree with him. He only hoped that this was one of Laura's probing gambits and nothing near a final offer. So far he had managed incredible restraint in keeping quiet and giving her the discussion. It had been an effort, but his throbbing head and the leaden exhaustion he had been feeling had helped him to sit in a semi-doze, letting the voices drone on around him. The discussion had ranged from sending the Cylons as far away as possible to them living cheek by jowl in the same star system. He'd stopped believing that Laura was serious at around the tenth suggestion, realizing that she was probing the Cylon responses as a way of understanding the dynamics between them all. He hoped that in reality she too wanted them as far away as possible, and he had sat uncomfortably through negotiations that had bizarrely included 'friendly' Cylons acting as a good-will shield to any other Cylons that might decide to break away from The Chief's paternal care to a breeding program including humand and Cylon volunteers. That suggestion had been enthusiastically pursued by all the Cylon 'childen'. There had also been the very live question of how to respond to any threats from returning rogue Centurions because, despite The Chief's assurances it looked as if the chrome variety were going to go it alone and take their chances in space. If The Chief were serious about the threat to them all then he would destroy the Centurions and the fact that he wasn't prepared to even discuss the matter told Adama all he needed to know about The Chief's true intentions and the inevitable outcome of these talks.

Either way, without the Centurions, that left The Chief with several thousand identical clones. Apparently there were only seven human models and it looked like one of them was going to be scrapped - the number Ones that Ellen had created. That had taken up a good hour of the negotiations, with Ellen arguing that they should be set loose with the Centurions and given their freedom. She had been a passionate advocate of their right of self-determination and had to be reminded that her pet had destroyed twelve worlds and killed millions of innocent people, a fact that she conveniently kept forgetting. In the end The Chief, Anders, Saul and the rest of the Cylons had agreed to destroy that model completely. Ellen had remained tight lipped with a calculating look that Adama didn't trust. This wasn't over.

'I would be happy to volunteer to be the first human ambassador to the Cylons,' Vice President Baltar said suddenly, breaking Adama out of his reverie. Baltar filled the room with a smile that included Leobin, silencing whatever he was trying to say to The Chief. As usual, Baltar's smile was completely false and insincere. The man was a snake and Adama was sure he had some ulterior motive. Clearly Laura had the same thought and was watching him suspiciously.

'And we would be happy to be ambassadors for the Cylons!' Ellen beamed enthusiastically, giving Saul a tight squeeze on his arm. Even he had to admit that his new, young version was distractingly beautiful. She had been stunning in her earlier years and he couldn't get used to seeing her like that again. She knew the effect she had on men and she was revelling in her new, young, lithe body, looking incongruously lovely beside the aged and exhausted-looking Saul. Even in his younger days he hadn't matched her and now he looked like her father, not her husband. Adama looked away. He had to remind himself that all this was false, that the Saul and Ellen he had met so many years ago hadn't been real. _They are machines_, he reminded himself sternly.

Laura was tapping her pen on her lips thoughtfully. 'What sort of contact do you imagine that we will be having?' She asked, raising her eyes expectantly to The Chief and Anders and ignoring Leobin completely. She too treated the Cylon models like unruly children. They didn't like it and it was provocative of her but it had his overwhelming approval. Apollo had remained strangely silent, only speaking when Laura asked him for clarification about military protocol or the practical feasibility of various options. He was patient, a good thing. It made him a good politician.

There was the sound of a polite cough from the door and Adama turned to see the guard gesturing to him. Adama rose with relief. 'Excuse me,' he mumbled, ignoring Saul's eyes boring into him as he strode to the door. Saul was acting like some rejected puppy and it was getting on Adama's nerves.

'Well?' he asked as the hatch door closed behind him, looking around expectantly. Starbuck immediately stepped forward, filling his field of view.

'They're gone.' she said, 'But...' she gestured behind her to where a slight figure was standing awkwardly, half hidden by Starbuck's body. WAdama looked more closely. It looked like Boomer , nervously moving from one foot to another in a gesture that Adama knew well. Was this Boomer? The cut on her cheek had gone, but then the Doc had said that Boomer had died when that virus had been broadcast around the fleet. Was this the resurrected version? He felt himself recoiling in disgust.

'Sir?' Boomer said awkwardly, hesitatingly taking a step forward then snapping a sharp salute. 'Reporting for duty, sir!' She was wearing military fatigues, he noticed. A colonial uniform. He wondered where she had gotten that from. The Cylons probably had a stash of uniforms to give to their spies. He stared at her dispassionately.

'You're a spy,' he said, not hiding the harshness from his voice.

'Not knowingly, sir,' she said, the fear right there in her eyes, fighting with her determination and her crisp military salute.

He gave a sharp, bitter laugh, 'And you're a fracking Cylon,'

'I didn't choose to be, sir. I want to come back. I belong here, with you, with Galactica.'

Adama stared at her impassively. He couldn't believe what he was hearing - what he was seeing. Was this for real? 'I don't think so,' he said finally, hardly believing the way she had manipulated him into feeling some shred of sympathy for her. 'Starbuck, escort her off the ship,' he turned away, no direction in mind. Just away. His quarters. The liquor bottle. Just like Saul. He turned aside from that as well. CIC then, where all the crew were human. At least none of _them _had died when the virus had been beamed in.

Boomer's expression followed him all the way to the CIC. What the hell had that been about? He thought of all the faces in the conference room, the way the Cylons had been, the way the Chief had treated them all, patiently explaining everything like they were a class of unruly schoolchildren. He shook off the memory and took a deep breath as he strode into the CIC, one glance at the Dradus screen telling him that more Cylon Basestars had joined in the game. How many fracking Cylons were there? When Laura asked the Chief he had admitted that he didn't know - had told her some bull about the number One model making more, keeping him frozen for years. The Chief had told them that originally only Saul and Ellen had been let out, something about the number One wanting to teach Ellen about humans. Saul, apparently, had been made to go along for the ride. A thirty year ride. The others had been out only ten years or so, enough for Samuel Anders to become a Pyramid player, for The Chief to get his toes into the military, for the woman called Tori to get involved in politics. Less than ten years. But Saul and Ellen, he had known them both for over thirty years now. Long enough.

He stared at the green blips on the dradus, watching the hand sweep the dial. There was no doubt that this was all some elaborate Cylon trap, an unpleasant game they were all being forced to play. Watching The Chief and Saul had been the hardest part, listening to their far-fetched story about being reprogrammed by some poorly built Cylon that Ellen had designed to be like her dead father. Hell, it was so crazy ridiculous that it could be true. He could see it, could see Ellen doing it. He shook his head, muttering a soft curse of frustration.

'Sir?'

It was Dee, watching him with concern. He let his gaze sweep the room, the faces in the CIC all watching him. None of these had died when the Chief sent out his Cylon program. But that didn't mean anything, for all he knew there was another raft of sleeper agents unaffected by any of it.

'Did you say something, Sir?'

He cleared his throat and forced himself to focus. 'Anything from the Cylon Baseships?'

'No sir, all quiet - the Cylons sent a ship over to pick up the... Cylons from Kobol. It left about ten minutes ago.'

Helo and Sharon, he realized.

Dee hesitated, 'It didn't go back to the Cylon basestar, though, sir. It jumped away as soon as it found some empty space.'

Adama turned back at the Dradus screen. So Helo had gone somewhere else. Somehow that wasn't a surprise, though he couldn't put his finger on why. Where was Helo going? To some sort of prearranged Cylon base? Back to Caprica? Did it matter?

He shook his head, realizing he hadn't eaten or drunk anything in a while - except for that liquor. He needed sleep, that headache was coming back. This wasn't the time to collapse. Any moment this whole thing could kick off and he was determined to at least take some of the Cylons with them, however futile the gesture. That was if Laura couldn't pull off her miracle. Why was he even hoping? He knew the score as well as she did, though back there in that conference room she had been bargaining as if it were all real, as if there really had been some hope. _Hope_. A precious commodity. His had gone along with his illusions. Now he was just waiting until the end - whatever it turned out to be and whenever it was coming for him. He was ready.


	113. Flight

Chapter 113

Flight

Jack stood in the cockpit of the plane, his expression one of complete shock. There was only the blackness of space in front of them now and Sawyer could see how the change had affected him. They had spent a good fifteen minutes slowly maneuvering their way around the myriad ships that made up the human part of the fleet, the motley collection of objects sitting in 3D like they were stuck to a wall or something. A three dimensional wall. Sawyer had stared long and hard at the Cylon base stars, their eerie shapes filling his mind with a weird sense of deja vu - like he'd seen something like a picture of them on some sci-fi novel back home. No one had spoken as Sharon had deftly piloted the ship, her frown of concentration echoed in Helo's face. Helo had been sitting in front of a panel of controls, a dizzying array of buttons and screens that had made Sawyer's head spin to look at them. The ship had moved slowly and gracefully through the silent fleet, floating through the junkyard of colors and shapes that made up the ships of Galactica's civilian fleet. The ships were huge, Sawyer had realized, massive passenger liners in space, the tiny windows on some of them showing just how vast they were. Some of them, he knew, had thousands of people on board. He had squinted at the windows to see if he could make out the tiny figures inside.

Jack had stood beside him silent and staring. Kate beside him, squeezed into the smaller space of the cockpit. The rest of the beach survivors had been herded inside the back of the plane where there were no windows. Sawyer had wondered if Jack would insist on every one of them seeing this - a tour of their new sci-fi world. It would have been one way of hammering home everything that Helo had told them. It was what he would have done, brought each of them in and told them to take a good hard look, then watched as their minds rejected it. Picon had, after all, been beautiful when he and Juliet had gazed at it for three months straight and neither of them had believed what they were seeing. What would it take? He stared out at the eerie landscape around them. They had seemed to be moving painfully slowly and Sharon had shown no sign of getting it over with.

Daniel Faraday had spent that part of the trip sitting at the only available seat, pouring over a chart and frantically making tiny marks on the edge of the paper. It was only when Sawyer had leaned a little closer that he had realized that Faraday was plotting their route: a set of mathematical formulae, precisely and carefully written down one margin.

'We're running out of time,' Helo had said quietly, looking anxiously through the large viewing window as they slowly came around another large civilian ship. The looming bulk of a Cylon Basestar could be seen silhouetted behind it, its weird starfish-like arms reaching out into space.

Faraday gave a huff of frustration and started scribbling more quickly. Sawyer saw Kate staring out at the view in front of them then slowly staring at Faraday's hunched form with wide eyes. Sawyer carefully ignored her and planted his feet more firmly to the floor. He was tired. He felt her eyes on him, the slight touch on his arm to get his attention. He ignored it, refusing to feel the small shiver of electricity that always followed her touch. His body always betrayed him around her. Well, he didn't have to listen - not to his traitorous body and not to her. Let her figure it out for herself. There was nothing he could do in any case, either she believed what was in front of her eyes or she didn't, it wasn't as if he was going to swing it either way. He had seen enough of denial, felt it inside of himself, to convince him that people only believed what they were ready to believe and no amount of evidence or proof was going to change the timing on that one. When she was ready she would see it, if she wasn't he would be wasting his breath.

He stared in front of him, watching the dance. The plane moved delicately – hell, the ship. It moved like some underwater creature in all three dimensions, slow and quiet. It was eerie and strange, like an underwater adventure. Yes, that was it- they were underwater, with sealed doorways and the strange weightless, frictionless movement of underwater creatures. It was mesmerizing. And very slow. Purposefully slow, he realized with a start. Sharon was moving very slowly on purpose.

'OK, let's just get the first jump over with and then we can sit down and figure this one out. Take us somewhere,' she said.

Faraday frowned and then made a small, precise mark on the map, reeling off a string of numbers which Sharon quickly punched into a number pad. Helo took his place beside her, 'Jump in five, four - he turned to Jack, 'you might want to sit down for this,' he said quietly. Jack stared at him but didn't react. Helo shrugged, 'Five, four three two one, Jump.'

Sawyer felt his stomach lurch, turning itself inside out as the world spun away. He twisted, banging his head on the side of the plane as he lost his balance, falling unceremoniously to the floor. When the world finally stopped turning it was Jack who was helping him to his feet. 'You OK?'

'Fine.' He stood up, holding the wall to steady himself and looking out through the view screen. The space ships had gone and they were surrounded by blackness, a few stars pinpricking the scene. Helo stood up and gestured to Faraday, 'Guess we should figure out where we're going.' he turned to Sharon, 'Let's hope you're right and they don't track us.'

'Boomer said it was clean,' Sharon said simply, 'and I don't think they'll come after us.' Helo's look told him that he wasn't so sure.

Jack stared out at the view in front of them, his eyes wide and a frown creasing his forehead. Kate was next to him now, shaking her head as if to clear it. 'FTL.' Helo said, taking in their expressions with a knowing smile. 'Faster than light. We just jumped away from the fleet. With any luck they won't be able to find us now.'

Jack's mouth tried to find the words but Sawyer could see his throat working but no sound coming out. He frowned again, looking down at the array of controls in the panel in front of Helo and Sharon and then back up out of the large viewing screen. Sawyer watched for a moment longer and then turned his attention back to Helo, Sharon and Faraday. It was easier to watch the ones who knew what was going on rather than those who were still trying to figure out whether to believe what their senses were telling them. He thought about going back to see Juliet, but he hesitated.

He knew she was back there with Charlie. She had been silent during the walk down to the hanger deck, silent as they were herded into the back of the ship. He could see that she had been thinking of home and how she wasn't going to go back there or see her sister or her sister's child ever again. He knew what that meant to her. It had been the one thing that had kept her going on the Island for all those years and now it was gone. They were here now and they were going... somewhere. He glanced over to where Faraday was still bending over the star chart. Somewhere. Sawyer gave a self-deprecating laugh. The room was eerily silent, with Helo and Sharon waiting like disciplined soldiers for Faraday to finish his task uninterrupted, Kate and Jack standing stock still staring silently at the scene in front of them. He and Juliet had both stood and stared at Picon together in the same way and now here he was with Kate and Jack, that same feeling of awed disbelief permeating the room. Only now he wasn't part of it. It wasn't even as pretty as Picon had been, but still, it wasn't just him and Juliet now, this crazy space experience belonged to all of them - minus the people in the back of the plane. It didn't look like anyone was going to invite them along to the crazy disbelief party. Just as well as there wasn't room for them all in here anyway.

Faraday stood up suddenly, making Sawyer jump. 'I think I've got it!' he exclaimed, moving over to where Helo had turned in his chair to face him. Faraday dragged the big sheet of paper and spread it out carefully over Helo's control panel. 'If we jump to these coordinates... here,' Daniel Faraday was holding a large chart, awkwardly trying to fold it in the cramped space. There wasn't really room for any more of them, but heck, he wasn't going anywhere. He turned as he felt Juliet slide up behind him.

'What's going on?' she asked.

'Getting coordinates,' he muttered, nodding over at Faraday. She took in the scene, Sharon at the controls, Helo with Faraday, Jack still staring wide-eyed out at the pin-pricks of stars in the otherwise black space in front of them.

Kate gasped in surprise. 'This is for real?' she breathed. She was silent a moment then turned to him earnestly. 'You don't think it's the Others?' she hissed more insistently, 'You don't think they drugged us or -.'

He gave a sudden laugh, shaking his head as he took a long slow breath. This was going to take a while.

00000

It was a lonely dinner; Marks and Spencer takeaway. A lonely old person's dinner in a precise portion for one. It had been two months since Daniel and Penny had gone to the Island. Two months since they had mysteriously disappeared. Two months since Charles had decided to attack Ben and there had been a pathetic, stupid mini-war on the beaches and in the jungles. Charles had won, of course, ousting Ben Linus with a gleeful revenge that Charles was probably still enjoying. Charles had set himself up as king of the hill and Ben Linus had been given his life and a guaranteed living off the Island so long as he stayed away. Charles had gotten him a job in some High School as a history teacher. God help the kids. Why Charles had done that was anybody's guess, but probably some ridiculous in-joke between the two men. Ben Linus had probably said something once that mentioned history teachers and high schools and Charles had never forgotten it and now, years later when any sane person would have forgotten the comment, Charles was not reaping his revenge.

Eloise looked out of the window of her London flat and stared at the rain. She could hear the faint sound of the wet tyres on the roads as the cars went by, muffled by the double glazing. Like the sea, she thought ruefully. The sound of the steady stream of cars going by reminded her of the sound of the waves on the shore. Like the Island where the sea was never far away. She missed it. Not the politics, the back-stabbing (literally) or the angry young men with too much testosterone. Not even the sense of belonging that she hadn't found anywhere else. No, it was the Island itself that she missed. It had a life, an awareness, a something that she had reached out and cupped into herself. That had all shattered when she had killed Daniel. She clearly remembered that day, the shock, the sudden waking up from a pleasant, soft existence into a nightmare that had never, even to this day, stopped stabbing her in the heart over and over again.

She probed the memory. It was still there; bright, clear, like the sunshine had been on the Island. The contrast with the gray of London did nothing but highlight the scene. There she was in her mind's eye, standing with the rifle, Daniel lying on the beach with her bullet in his back, the shocking realization that she had just killed her own son, the next few decades spent paying the price for that one error of judgement. Maybe she should have been the one to go back in time and change it all, not Daniel. And certainly not Penny. She hadn't wanted to send Penny along, but it had been the only way to ensure that Charles kept out of it. He had been so gung-ho about finally getting his chance at Ben Linus and Eloise knew that the only thing that would give Daniel's plan a breathing space was if his darling blue-eyed daughter was in the way. Charles despised weakness and Daniel's mental state had elicited nothing but a cruel derision, so he wouldn't have cared what had happened to Daniel. The moment he saw Daniel, Charles had withdrawn all support for his son. Besides, he said he knew how it ended and that Daniel was a dead man anyway. _Whatever happened happened_ and all that.

She sighed and pushed away the half-eaten food, wearily going through the motions of getting ready for bed, for sleep, for dreams, for another day. Two months now and still nothing. No sound, no word. Charles had searched the whole Island for Penny and there was no sign of either her or Daniel. Some of Ben's followers had said that they had seen some people being airlifted off the beach in helicopters. Charles said he knew nothing about it and it hadn't been his team, but she wouldn't put it past him to have Penny safe and sound and Daniel put away somewhere. Charles had always been full of lies and manipulations. It would be just like him to have both of them squirreled away somewhere and he just wasn't telling her. Punishment, perhaps, for not taking his advice to stay away from the Island and then having the audacity to send his beloved daughter there. Maybe that had been a mistake. Penny had insisted on going, been absolutely adamant about it. Probably searching for that disaster of a boyfriend. Eloise hadn't tried to stop her - Daniel had needed someone there who had some grasp on what was going on and as she wasn't going to go herself, Penny had seemed like the next best thing. Eloise had encouraged it. Another mistake, she admitted ruefully. She should have paid more heed to Charles' mood and kept his daughter out of it.

But there had been no one else- she couldn't have gone - someone was needed to stay at home and orchestrate the whole thing. The sudden appearance of Desmond that day at Penny's flat had convinced her of that. Plus the fact that Charles was up to something and if she were on the Island she would be at the mercy of whoever won the latest stupid spat. Besides, once Daniel's mind was whole again he was the only one who could change things. It was his timeline they were following now.

No, she had done the right thing by staying away. She had gone over it all hundreds of times over the last two months and each time she followed the same weary course; given the time again she would do exactly the same thing. Daniel would have gone with Penny and she would have stayed here in London and waited for them.

Her last thought as she slipped into sleep was the same as it was every night: the Island, the sounds of the sea, the cars on the wet road, the light, oh god, the light, sunshine on trees, the warm damp air. The longing for the place was inside of her. She understood why Charles was trying to get back there. It was in her too, drawing her, pulling her. Like she did every night, she consciously closed down a little part of herself and shut it away. No Island. No sunshine. No sea and surf and sand. If she bothered to get up and look out of the window she knew what would be there; just cars and tyres on wet roads and the sight of the orange-lit street lamps creating halos of semi-darkness on the misty roads of night-time London. Nothing to see.


	114. All Change

Chapter 114

All Change

Eloise Hawking awoke with the sudden knowledge that something was different. She came instantly awake, her years on the Island still giving her the facility to move from sound sleep to immediate action. She automatically located the small pepper spray she kept under her pillow, sliding her hand onto it and grasping it firmly then lying still and silent, listening.

The sound of the battery powered clock's minute hand croaked its way around the dial. The traffic outside moved with the constant sounds of nature - more the steady rushing wind through the trees than the rhythmic in out of the tides as the rush-hour traffic moved in an unbroken line on the main road outside her window. She knew what it would look like without going to the window: car after car going by without a gap. It sounded like the wind in the trees on the Island, like the rush before the dark shadow had moved, killing and destroying everything in its path. She shuddered and willed herself to open her eyes and reassure herself that she wasn't there now. No. She was here, in London, in her flat. The tops of the trees weren't moving, it was only the cars outside. She wasn't on the Island anymore. At this point she would usually stand and go to the window, making her eyes see that her mind and her ears were lying, but even with her eyes open she could sometimes see the tops of the trees swaying dizzyingly in the sudden wind is if they were right there in front of her. She opened her eyes fully then, taking in the bland white of the room in front of her. Walls and ceiling and floor. No Island. No trees. Just cars.

She closed her eyes again. She was tired. Always was, these days. A few more minutes of sleep, snatch a little more of that sleepy oblivion before-

She startled. Something _was _wrong. Very wrong. She sat up and looked around more carefully, squinting her eyes in suspicion. The bedroom was neat, white and clean. She didn't live here often and the firm that maintained the place did a good job of keeping it starkly cold and un-welcoming. An all-white, gray, clinical cleanliness. It wasn't home- never would be- but at least it had more privacy than a hotel.

She paused, holding her breath for a moment before shuffling on her slippers and dressing gown and easing herself silently over to the window, careful to draw the curtains without pulling aside the lace that covered the inside to shield her from the street's prying eyes. There was the traffic, its sound still steady and monotonous, the gray skies, the sedate movement of the clouds contrasting with the jostling too-early-too-pushy energy of the morning rush hour. Really, why did they have to start so aggressively so early? She watched them a moment, satisfying herself that here she was and there were the cars - the source of the noise, she reminded herself - and that she was unmistakably in an upstairs window looking out from the safety of her bedroom. As she turned into the room she realized she was still clutching the pepper spray.

She shook herself. What on earth was wrong with her today? She had already exhausted her checklist of what usually bothered her - mostly uncomfortable memories from the Island that crept up on her while she was sleeping and hit her full force in that delicate moment between sleep and wakefulness. It was like that, this feeling, a discomfort that seemed to stretch right back and-

She froze. Something was very, very wrong. It was inside her, it was... with a rush of hope she steeled herself and then carefully, tentatively at first, she probed the memory. _That _memory, pushing at it like a tongue on a sore tooth. It was still there, still intact, still the same. The rifle, the strange man, the shot in the back, Daniel falling... she blinked it away. That was as far as she needed to go. In spite of the eerie waking it was all the same. She must have had a bad dream, that was all. What she was feeling now was just the echoes of a dream. She was getting silly with it now. All the waiting was making her jumpy.

She took a deep breath and willed herself to grow up. 'Stop being such a wimp!' she said out loud so that she could hear the admonition. That was right. Grow up. All this waiting was getting to her. She had always preferred action, guns, fighting, not this slow creep of tension that wore her away from the inside.

Her mornings in London followed the same pattern; shower, breakfast, hair, clothes, makeup. She moved through it with an act of will. Something was definitely different, the strange new feeling still there; some indefinable thing that felt alien, a disruption to her inner landscape, a dissonance, a sour note that almost made her feel physically nauseous with its jarring lack of belonging. Something was wrong, she could feel it in her guts and it was getting stronger. Was it some sort of instinct for survival? Maybe something _was _wrong? Was Daniel dead? She felt the first real flutter of fear. She had heard about mothers who had a connection with their children so that they knew when they were in danger and could sense the moment they died. Was that it? Was he dead? She resisted the urge to phone Charles and demand that he tell her what was going on.

No, if she had learned one thing it was to never ever show him any real weakness - false, contrived tears, yes. On occasion. But never any pain that wasn't calculated to manipulate or convince him of sincerity. If she made the mistake of contacting him in her present state of discombobulation he would sense it immediately and then god only knew where that would end up taking her. It didn't help that she had no idea where Daniel was or how on earth to contact him - and that bloody girl Penny had gone with him and not a word from her either. Penny was supposed to at least make an effort to contact her. No sodding chance of that. She sighed angrily and pushed her plate away, rising slowly to scrape the uneaten breakfast into the rubbish bin in the corner of the tiny kitchen. To work then. Enough moping around feeling sorry for herself. _That_ would never build an empire.

It wasn't until she remotely accessed her work computer in the US that _it_, that strange feeling,really changed. She logged in and checked the status of the programs she had running. There was nothing much to see - she had been plotting a model of the movement of background EM radiation around the area where she knew the Island was supposed to be. There was no discernible change, nothing to tell her whether Daniel was there or not. She had tried to extrapolate from what she knew of Daniel's data but without him she had no real idea about whether or not she had set it up in a way that would give her any real chance of finding anything. She was using his numbers, his data from the old journal, the readings he had taken on his first trip. She didn't even know if it still applied. If anything had changed then the data was meaningless anyway. Still, what was she supposed to do, sit down twiddling her thumbs and just wait? She closed the program in frustration. _Waiting_. Sod waiting.

She was annoyed by the time she had logged out of the university mainframe and opened her email account. There were a bunch of the usual irritating emails from students and faculty. One from an acquaintance who considered herself an old friend. Eloise skimmed it and then deleted it without replying. The woman had no practical use - no contacts or information that would make a friendship worth her while. Student emails could wait. She would have to read those eventually. She checked the ones from various members of staff - all dull. And then there was one from Daniel's old account at Oxford. At first she didn't realize its significance - she assumed it was spam or his account had been hacked. She had arranged all of his emails to be forwarded to her own account and it wasn't unusual for bits and pieces to turn up in hers.

This email was innocuous enough; a simple picture file. She hesitated. It was probably something unpleasant - if it was spam it was sure to be pornography or some unsavory image of a suffering animal alongside a plea for money. She checked the sender. An odd string of letters, no discernible name. Curious. She scanned the file for viruses and then, satisfied that it was clean, pulled it up onto the screen.

She had expected to be shocked by it, but this was more than innocuous. She stared at it for a moment. It was a photograph of a group of people, about forty of them, all standing in a group in three lines, front middle and back, just like one of her old school photographs. There was a front row of children sitting down, a middle row of kneeling adults, some with infants in their arms and the last a row of adults all standing up. She frowned as she automatically scanned the faces. It took only a moment before she spotted him. Daniel was there kneeling in the center row with one arm slung casually - familiarly - around some girl she'd never seen before. The girl was holding a baby high up so that it was in the picture and Daniel was beaming fit to burst. Around them were other couples, their hands resting on the shoulders of children sitting cross legged in the front row. She spotted Penny and Desmond, a toddler holding Penny's hand and Desmond looking - well, as gormless as he always did. The inane grin on his face confirming her impression of him. She scanned the other faces; she didn't recognize any of them. There was an older couple in the back row, a white haired man and a black woman with a windswept, healthy look to her face, the man leaning contentedly with his arm around her. Other couples, all smiling. An Asian-looking girl and a man with a strong jaw, two children gathered in front of them. Couples. Nearly all couples. Who on earth were these people? She turned her attention back to the image of Daniel and traced her finger over the screen, softly touching his face, then letting her finger hover over the baby in the girl's arms. The child had his eyes, his hair, that angle of his forehead. She was quite sure that she had a photograph of Daniel as a baby that looked identical to the child she was staring at now.

She felt the breath leave her body. What the hell was this about? She turned back to the rest of them, quickly running her eyes over every face. These had to be the crash survivors from that plane that went down on the Island - the one from Sydney. But this photograph wasn't taken on the Island. She knew every inch of that place and this wasn't it. Behind and around the group were vast skies - a hot, dry grassland, flat with the hint of mountains in the distance. Somewhere with a big blue sky and brown grass. Australia? Africa? She checked the file. No note, no explanation, nothing except the picture.

For once she was so distracted that she didn't check the memory. It was only later, only after she'd phoned through to Daniel's department in Oxford and demanded that the technical team trace the file, only when she had decided to hurry them up by going there herself and had taken the train for the two hour journey to Oxford, only when she was sitting in the office waiting for 'John' to finish staring at the screen in front of him with a sort of puzzled confusion that she realized something; the memory had gone. She had poked at it, still feeling that odd sensation of her internal world feeling _wrong_. But suddenly something shifted, almost a lurch inside her belly. At first she thought it was a heart attack - it did feel physical, like her body itself was changing, morphing somehow into a shape that felt alien and strange. The waistband of her skirt felt looser, her hair felt different, the room seem to shift, shimmer, change. And John. John in front of her, she could swear that his shirt - his freaking shirt changed color. That plaid weave on it, had that been there before? She could have sworn it had been a light blue... ?

Then the room started to sway and she had to close her eyes to steady herself. When she opened them again the whole desk and chair had moved. At least she thought it had. And John wasn't there anymore, no, this guy was different, this guy, she knew without asking him, was called 'Pete'. He was still looking for the email with the photograph. The photograph was the same. Daniel was still there, inexplicably there. He shouldn't have been there. He should have been on the Island, preparing the way for his ascent to the top post that Ben Linus was about to vacate. She paused. What the hell... ?

It was then that she rushed to the memory, almost stamping her way to it. She brought up the image with a desperate grab. And there it was, there _she _was, on the Island, a younger version of herself. And then Daniel came into the clearing and - and he didn't. No Daniel. No clearing. The Island, yes. The Island was there in her mind. But no Daniel. She quickly scanned forward. She had been annoyed that day. It had been hot, she'd been pregnant. There had been a row with Charles that upset her. A wild boar had run into the camp and she had shot it in the back and then turned, shaken, to ask how the hell it made it so close, why Charles, out hunting, hadn't stopped it when he saw which direction it was running in. He had shrugged and said he didn't think it would be a problem. A stupid argument. A stupid day. The turning point in their relationship because that was the day she saw through him. Finally. Later she thought he had driven that damn pig through the camp on purpose, never mind the risk to her and their unborn child. Charles was like that.

She rested on the memory a moment longer, savoring the taste of it, seeing the light and the way it played on the trees, feeling how it was to be there again in her mind. It felt real, a real memory, shaping its way as ultimate truth. She scanned forward to the rest of her life. It hadn't been long after the pig before she'd fallen out with Charles for good and left the Island. He'd had an affair - it didn't last - but that had been the final straw. She hadn't taken him back.

Eloise stopped for a moment, frowning in concentration as she tried to imagine Daniel lying there and- she could do it, she could see it still, but it was more like a dream or something imagined than a memory. It didn't feel _true._

She went on then, following the main trammels of her life; her interests, her... everything. But there were shifts, changes, differences. She probed curiously at her memories. She could definitely still see it, still see in her imagination shooting Daniel in the back, but it was a contrived story, a false, imagined thing. It wasn't real, didn't feel real, had no emotional charge at all. What was real was a whole other string of events with the same flavor, the same... taste? It was as if there was a strange mirroring of events that moved in the same direction, leading to the same conclusions but just getting there differently.

She turned quickly to her handbag and pulled open the pocket where she kept the two journals side by side - the one from the past and the one from- she stopped in her tracks as she stared at the lone book. One book. Had she left the other behind? No. No, it was always two, she kept them both together. Now there was only one. She grabbed it and riffled through the pages. This was the newer one. She checked the cover. No bloodstains. And inside... it wasn't the same. Sure the writing was his, the notes, the long equations, the Island. But the pages were set out differently and the data set wasn't the same.

She held the book in her hands and straightened in her chair, closing her eyes and going back in her mind, remembering her pregnancy with Charles in slow, careful detail. Shooting Daniel had no part in it. She had argued with Charles because he didn't want a baby, wasn't ready to be a father and had felt tricked and manipulated into being with her and besides, fancied bloody Susan with the dark mysterious hair and the stupid dress sense, all animal skins and short skirts. That hadn't lasted long, just long enough for Eloise to see which way the wind was blowing and take her and her unborn child away, far away. Charles would make an awful father and she wouldn't subject any child of hers to that sort of crap.

So she had been a single mother. But the Island had called to her. It was in her blood. If she wasn't going to go back there she would at least understand it, pry out its secrets so that she could master it that way. She would be king of the heap, not Charles. And so it had gone on. The competition was Charles; the race was to find out the hidden reality behind the Island, the route was her son. Daniel had always been bright and clever. Too clever. She realized quite early on that he would make a brilliant physicist and together she would help him to his birthright; the Island. It had been her obsession, her driving force. Thinking it now it felt so... _right_. And he had taken to it. It wasn't as if he needed much encouragement. He was a natural. All it had taken was a little guidance every now and again - there had been a stage in early adolescence when she had had to more firmly divert his talents away from the music he loved to the numbers he loved so that he could turn his mind instead to unlocking the secrets of nature. The music had faded from his life and he had wholeheartedly applied himself to the task. And now? The race to the Island had invigorated them both.

She frowned. What the hell was happening? Was this really her? She closed her eyes and forced the old memory back. There he was on the Island, his back to her, the gun in her hand... the memory faded, morphed into some ridiculous row with Charles about her pregnancy. She opened her eyes and stared at the wall in front of her. When she looked back on that day on the Island it was the pig, not Daniel that lay there dead. She hadn't shot anyone, hadn't seen anyone new, no tall dark-haired stranger that turned out to be her son. The memory of shooting Daniel was now a memory of times she'd remembered it. The memory itself was gone, as if it had never been there, elegantly and silently fading completely from her mind. She suddenly felt sick. This wasn't right. She was supposed to feel good about this, wasn't she? This was supposed to be a moment of deep peace and relief but that didn't explain the roiling of her guts and this terrible feeling of foreboding that tightened in her chest as she tried to take a breath.

The memory of shooting Daniel was nearly gone - all that was left was her memory of remembering it. Gone. But what took its place wasn't comforting or warm and cozy; it was hard and cruel and - and Daniel was gone.

The man in front of her - John, no Pete, was it Pete? - turned then with a line of puzzlement drawn between his eyebrows. He gave her an anxious look, the sweat beading on his forehead. He licked his lips, sighed and then turned back to the screen, clearly not liking what he saw there.

'Well?' she snapped, in a voice that didn't feel like hers. Her whole body didn't feel like hers. It was the wrong size, the wrong shape, even her lips felt like they formed the words all wrong.

'It looks like it was sent from some sort of beacon,' he said tentatively.

'A beacon?' She tried to get her mind around the words and what it could mean. 'Where?'

'Here.' He pointed to the map. Africa. So not Australia then. She peered closer at the spot. It looked like it was in the middle of nowhere. Daniel had gone to the Island to try and thwart his father. Penny was with him - more as a sort of elaborate hostage than anything else. A long story to do with Desmond, her boyfriend. Eloise had managed to get him to the Island and after that Penny was easily manipulated. She was the shield, protecting Daniel from his father. The plan had been to let Charles and Ben slug it out and then use the EM wave to shift time, changing reality to the point where they could get a steal on Charles and Ben and have control of the Island - with all its amazing secrets that would keep a physicist like Daniel happy for years. Daniel had plans to turn it into a center of scientific excellence. His dream was a noble one. Not like hers. She just wanted to beat Charles at his own game. Still, she respected Daniel's passion, after all hadn't she been the one to foster it? So he had gone to the Island. And then promptly disappeared. She had waited for three months, suspecting that Charles had a hand in it. Until the photograph had arrived this morning. Sent from a beacon in Africa.

Fine. So she would go to Africa.

xxx

As sites went it was bleak; hot and dry and desert, a searing wind that pulled out the moisture in her lips and left them dry and cracking. They had driven for the best part of the day and the light was beginning to fade fast. Pete was standing staring around, holding the device that was supposed to pinpoint the source of the email. They had set up camp and now she was waiting. Always waiting. Pete was frowning, walking up and down to try and locate the strongest signal, the annoying beeping noise fading in and out as he stepped to the left and then right. Finally he stopped, looked up at the sky, the first stars just visible on the huge bowl of the sky. Big skies here. Hot skies. The temperature was dropping now but not by much. He bent down and pulled a little flag out of his pocket, marking the spot. Then they started digging.

The damn thing was buried several feet down. A tiny transfer device of a kind that none of the researchers had ever seen. It was mangled - burned out as if it had been designed to self-destruct once it had sent its one signal. Single use they said, nodding knowingly. Single use. One little moment, one little signal, the single picture file sent to Daniel's account then poof! up it went in a cloud of smoke, leaving this little burned-out scrap of metal. Which was why, they assured her, it had been so hard to trace. It had stopped transmitting and they had had to extrapolate its location from the GPS and the file itself, and the server it had routed through and blah blah that she made no effort to understand. She was numb now. More than numb. Broken, more like. She held the thing in her hand and dumbly allowed herself to be shepherded back to her tent and then the next day home.

It was only a week later that she received the results of the scan on the object. The metal was an alloy, sophisticated in its design but simple enough. They had checked and double checked the results and had to conclude that Daniel had somehow gone and buried the thing there. For whatever reason they had to conclude that he didn't want to be found. Yes, the results were odd, and they were baffled by her insistence that they have the thing carbon dated, and yes they were checking the results because there had to be some error in the recording equipment and- what? The results? Oh, well, as we said they were anomalous. Well, so far the estimated date for the thing was over two thousand years old. But of course there had to have been some mistake, or it was a hoax or... she had stopped listening at this point, letting the phone drop back down onto its cradle. That was all she needed to know. Two thousand years. He was gone. Lost in the past. Gone. She would never see him again. She felt a chill run through her.

_Whatever happened happened. _His words, his constant refrain.

She would never see him again. He was gone. Dead by now. Long dead; dead two thousand years ago. Along with her grandchildren and that strip of a girl Daniel must have chosen as his wife. Her head hurt. Thoughts and images still wove and tangled in her mind - she had them both now, both realities living side by side - shooting him was still there, the echo of a life that didn't feel real now, more a memory of a memory. She had held onto it like a fleeing dream and pulled it into her reality. Like a dream she had written it all down while it was still fresh, still _there_.

_Whatever happened happened. _He had almost been right. It had almost been the same. Well, maybe it was the same - the salient points, the hard results were the same. He was gone, that was all. And to top it all, she had to admit to herself that life had been worse. At least in the other she'd had a sense of... well, _rightness _somehow. In spite of the rotten seed at the beginning. She had spent _that _life trying to save her son. This one had been driven by greed and little more than the desire for power. Yes, she had been a better person when she had shot her own son. A much better person. And here she was now; the result was the same. He was dead and she was alone, with nothing to show for it all but a photograph.

So much for changing anything.


End file.
